


Of Myth and Magic

by Wonkington



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Complete, Drama, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Muggle Life, Mystery, Psychological Drama, References to Suicide, References to physical abuse, Romance, Spoilers - All Books, Suspense, references to mental illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 04:04:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 76,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2758970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wonkington/pseuds/Wonkington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knew it wasn't good for her, standing here like this, waiting for something that wasn't there to appear. Something spectacular to happen between misnumbered houses. Something to prove that magic was real. Eventual SS/HG. AU with purpose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Grimmauld Place

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [О мифах и магии](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7255189) by [Wonkington](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wonkington/pseuds/Wonkington), [zaboraviti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zaboraviti/pseuds/zaboraviti)



**Chapter One**

**Grimmauld Place**

She was not going to tell her shrink about this. Granted, she was becoming used to storing secrets away from him, giving him crumbs (the dreams, the stray thoughts or names or words) and keeping the bread of her delusions for herself. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

And he definitely wasn't going to find about this. Her, standing here on the pavement, huddled beneath an umbrella and watching. She couldn't - she _wouldn't_ \- tell him what she was watching for, either. Waiting for. Because truly, she had no idea.

All she knew was that this place, this solid wall between one terraced house and another in a dodgy part of London, was not as it appeared to be. It hadn't changed from the last times she had been there - four visits in total, so far - except that there was now a man's cap balanced on the fencepost nearest the gate. The wool was damp, specked with raindrops. Hermione wanted to take it, stuff it into her handbag, but she knew her mum would inevitably come across it and take it as yet another sign that something about her daughter wasn't quite right.

There had been so many "not quite right" moments in the past six years, since Hermione had, as she called it, "woken up." When she came-to in her childhood bedroom in her quiet neighborhood in her quiet suburb south of London, wondering why her hands were so clean, why her muscles didn't ache, and why on earth she felt as though her muscles were made of bricks, her blood running sluggish with dust. Her fingers felt thick, hard to move. Indeed, it had felt not so much like waking and much more like falling asleep.

Six years. Six years of not doing nearly as well in school as her parents had hoped, not able to hold down a job due to her wont to daydream. Six years of psychiatrist visits, of her mother watching her, chewing her lip, jotting down notes when she thought Hermione wasn't watching. The disbelieving laughter when Hermione - not usually one to make a fool of herself - took the broom from the cupboard, set it in the centre of the sitting room floor, and watched it carefully, brown eyes barely even blinking, as if she was waiting for it to take flight. Then there was the shock when Mrs Granger walked in on her daughter throwing a handful of her grandmother's ashes into the fireplace and shouting "The Burrow!" before sticking her foot into the flames and meriting a trip to the overcrowded A&E. That had even frightened Hermione's father, who had for so long before this point clung to the platitude that "bright people are always a bit odd," and had come home from work that evening white-faced, his mobile phone clutched tight in his hand and words racing through his mind: _What are we going to do about Hermione?_

When she didn't know what she was going to do about _herself._

She knew it wasn't good for her, standing here like this, waiting for something that wasn't there to appear. Something magical to happen between mis-numbered houses. Something to prove to her that she wasn't mad.

_You_ are _mad._

She allowed herself twenty minutes. She could measure the passing of time well enough - she had to, since she'd forgotten her mobile (as she almost always did). The neighbours had kindly allowed her a half-hour of staring last time before they called the police. She wondered if they'd be less wary, now that she was back after having been patted down, her handbag searched for non-existent drugs.

_One more minute._

Now that she was only a crackpot, obviously in need of professional help. Chasing ghosts of dreams to the dodgy part of Islington.

_Thirty seconds._

"Can I help you?"

It was an old woman with a dog. A dachshund. She looked concerned. A clear rain cap was pulled over her head, dotted with rain; her dog lifted his leg on the fencepost.

"I'm just waiting for a friend," Hermione said. She startled herself with the lightness of her voice. "He's running late."

"Right, well," the woman said, already walking on, "do be careful. It's going to be dark, soon."

"Thank you," Hermione said, and sighed as the woman disappeared into number thirteen.

Rain. Five cars driving by. A dog barking, someone dragging a recycling bin from the kerb.

"You, too?"

Hermione started. Did she know that voice? It was a man - tall and dark in a buttoned black trench coat, black hair, black eyes studying the gap between houses from behind a hooked nose. He held a black umbrella, just like Hermione's, and stood next to her, his stance casual, as though he knew her.

She relaxed, as if she knew him.

"Yes," she said. "But I don't know why."

"No," he said. "I don't either."

They stood in companionable silence for a moment, looking at nothing.

"Snape," he said.

"Hermione," she replied.

And they both thought those names sounded rather familiar.


	2. Charing Cross

**Chapter Two**

_**Charing Cross** _

The house seemed emptier than usual. Smelled a bit strange, like something had died somewhere, despite the fact that he'd so recently pulled out the furniture, torn out the shelves, replaced everything he could afford to replace and taken a hair dryer and plastic wrap to the windows in desperate hope of staving off the worst of the draughts. If he lived somewhere different, he would have torn up the floors by now, but he knew, beneath the cold carpet in the study and the warped old wood in the lounge, there would be nothing but stone. No dead bodies, none of the things that haunted his nightmares: wasted, white, noseless faces; the flickering, forked tongues of snakes.

No  _her._

There was no one there to greet him when he pushed open the front door (hard, with the sharp bone of his hip - it always stuck in wet weather). It shouldn't surprise him, the absence of life, but for some reason, today, it did.

It had felt strange to sit on the train, alone. Startling the middle-aged woman who sat across from him, short, rose-tipped nose stuck fast in  _The Daily Mail_ , trying to pretend she wasn't looking up between paragraphs, judging to see whether or not he'd moved (or perhaps drawn a switch blade from his pocket, planning to rob her for her necklace, worth no more than five quid at the cash for gold). He smiled at her once, but that only sent her red-faced back into her paper. She disembarked at the same stop, Cokeworth North, but hung back and bee-lined to the cafe, as though she was afraid he would follow her home.

Again, this sort of thing didn't usually bother him, but today, it did.

The walk from the station had been cold, damp, strangely silent, the town nestled in mist rolling in from the river. He could barely see the pavement beneath his feet. His mind was back on that street in London hours before, when he had tried not to look at  _her_ , with her cloud-like brown hair, her large eyes, her teeth that she tried to hide behind her fingers - he hadn't been able to tell, but perhaps they were a bit crooked, or a bit large. Enough to cause her embarrassment, regardless, though he had only just wondered what on earth he had said that had made her smile.

The fact that she asked where he'd come from had surprised him. He thought - no, he  _knew_  - that his accent was no different than hers.

"Lincolnshire," he'd told her.

"Oh," she said. "Are you here for long?"

"No," he replied, "but I'll be back."

They hadn't exchanged anything more than names. No numbers, or addresses. It seemed as though she was growing more unsteady the longer they stood there, trying not to look at each other, watching the terraced houses as though waiting for a light show to begin. It must have only been minutes, but it had felt much shorter. He could feel a ticking in his head, his subconscious reminding him that he was running out of time. He didn't know what it was counting down to.

"Do you promise?" she had asked, finally looking over, her eyes meeting his.

He felt as thought his heart had literally stopped. Dropped dead into the cavity of his abdomen and sunk right behind his lower ribs. He pressed his hand to the bones, pushed hard, like he'd be able to feel its inability to beat beneath his palm.

She didn't look away.

"Yes," he said, and his heart sputtered back to life. "I promise."

* * *

It was two months before Hermione saw him again. A dull, damp autumn had given way to an even damper mid-winter, the rain driving down from a grey sky, narrow streets hazy with fog. The city teemed with black-coated Christmas shoppers: dashing off pavements, into shops, onto buses or down the stairs and escalators on the Tube. So many times, she thought it was  _him_ , but it never was.

Until now.

It was in a pub, a chain on Charing Cross Road, new mass-market paraphernalia stuffed into a 17th-century shell. Black beams stretched over shiny laminated menus stood up on tables, and cheap house beer poured free from the taps. The carpets were patterned and somehow sticky, and Hermione could smell the toilets from the back of the bar. She'd never been there before but she was there today, though she wouldn't be able to tell you why. Her mum and dad had always gone to great pains to avoid such places whenever possible. They'd gone half-hours out of their way on family holidays, in search of "a true gastropub," (her mother always said): "You know we don't trust restaurants with pictures on the menu."

Her parents wouldn't even give this place a second glance if Hermione were standing naked in the front window.

But she was perfectly presentable, today, tucked insider her woollen coat, a wilting paper poppy pinned to her lapel, as she sipped her gin and tonic. She didn't flinch as he sat down across from her, whiskey in hand.

"This is getting odd," Hermione told him.

"It is," he agreed. He held a hand out to her, and she took it, giving it a brief squeeze, as though she couldn't bring herself to touch him long enough for a handshake.

"How is Lincolnshire?" she asked.

"Dark," Snape replied. "Rainy."

"Like London, then," she said.

"Not dissimilar."

He drank and made a face, and she smiled, nearly forgetting to cover her mouth with her hand.

"How did you find me?" Hermione asked, if only because she thought she should.

"I wasn't looking for you," Snape replied. "Why didn't you find me?"

"I wasn't looking for you," Hermione retorted, and his eyebrows arched with surprise before returning to their natural glower.

"So here we are, again," he said. He sat back in his creaking chair and crossed one leg over the other, his ankle resting on his knee. His shoes were leather but worn - black, like his clothing. He was a man-shaped void, devoid of colour; a person in negative. "What brought you to Charing Cross?" he asked.

Hermione leant across the table, her hands in fists on the surface. Leftover crumbs stuck to the folds of her palms.

"It's the same, isn't it?" she whispered. "The same draw."

He didn't say anything. He only watched her with black, shining eyes.

"You're here, too," she reminded him. "You can't lie to me."

His foot found the floor. The chair creaked beneath him, swayed dangerously as he scooted toward her, his knee knocking against her stockinged thigh before reaching a safe place toward the side of the table. He sucked in his lips, a surprisingly pink tongue appearing before vanishing back behind his teeth.  _He's not handsome_ , Hermione thought.  _So why do I feel compelled to stare_?

"Yes," he admitted at last. The whisper of his voice flustered her. For the first time (though why on earth was it the first time, considering the place where they'd first met?), she realized that she knew nothing about this man. He could be  _dangerous_.

Actually, it was very likely he  _was_  dangerous. Those eyes, the unsettling way he sat there, wholly  _other_  to the way this world was, like someone who didn't belong, someone who transcended. Did Hermione have this effect on people? Sometimes, she wished she did, if only because it would provide a reason as to why she had so few friends.

"What is it?" she asked, the chair edging out from beneath her.

"I don't know," he admitted.

"When did you arrive?"

"An hour ago."

"Did you take the tube here?"

"Yes. I'd originally planned on going back to Islington, but ended up here, instead."

"Me too," she whispered.

She stopped, the hair on the back of her neck prickling. The barman was loitering near them, and looked as though he was watching them. It made her uneasy, though at the same time, thrilled her.

"The wall," she said.

"A secret passageway," he said, and his brows furrowed, as though he were confused.

"Yes!" she said. "Why does everyone think we're crazy?"

"We're shutting for the afternoon," the barman called over.

Hermione ignored him.

"It's just a wall, though, isn't it?" she said.

"I expect so," Snape replied.

Hermione frowned, beat her fists once on the table, then took her glass and marched back up to the bar.

The barman wasn't even doing anything. Just standing there, waiting for them to leave. He scowled at her as she slid her empty glass across to him, but didn't reach out to touch it.

"I have a question," Hermione said.

The barman raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to ask.

"Do you have odd people coming in here?"

The barman rolled his eyes. "A bit more specific," he said.

"Have you," Hermione replied, thinking hard, "ever had anyone try to walk through the back wall?"

If he were doing anything, he would have stopped. As it was, he became even stiller, his jaw tightening, a vein standing out from the short line of his neck.

"Bunch of nutters," the barman muttered, then added, louder, "We're shutting up." He grabbed Hermione's glass and threw it in the box with the bottles; the sound of it shattering made Hermione jump. "Happy Christmas."

Hermione and Snape lingered on the pavement as the barman locked the door behind them. Glances were exchanged - but where smiles might accompany, out of embarrassment for choosing a pub with such poor service - only confusion remained.

"Right," Hermione said, as Snape drew his coat tighter around his thin frame. "What now?"

He turned toward her, a mere ten degrees. She caught sight of the black sliver of a pupil, the glint that told her he was looking at her, soaking her in, committing her to memory. She fought the urge to bury her face in her hands.

"When are your parents expecting you home?" he asked her, and she finally smiled without embarrassment, knowing that this was a very bad idea, indeed.


	3. The Grangers'

**Chapter Three**

_**The Grangers'** _

The last time Hermione had had a boy (man? She was twenty-five - surely it was acceptable to call them men, by now?) at her house…well, it had not ended well. In hindsight, Hermione herself was very capable of criticising her own choices, talking herself down from the headiness that had inspired her to slip her number into his hand, as though he couldn't have looked it up himself, and tell him, "Do visit. It would be so nice to see you somewhere that isn't here."

He had red hair. They usually had red hair - she found herself gravitating toward gingers since  _it_  happened. There had to be few red-headed, single males of a reasonable age left in London whom she  _hadn't_ dated, and one of them had been her mental health nurse. He had a wide, friendly smile, his skin so freckled that they all joined up across his cheeks, casting the bridge of his nose in bronze. He'd sometimes excuse himself for a fag break, only to slip a hardback from the nurses' desk and huddle outside to read amongst the smokers (their backs just visible from the ward window). He always managed to slip Hermione extra jelly with lunch. The final token of his affection, if she could call it that, was when once, when no one else was around to hear, he leant in close and whispered, smiling, "I still have no idea why you're in here."

"Does that mean I'll be going home soon?" Hermione had asked, hope fluttering in her chest. She could already feel the soft fur of her cat's tail sliding between her hands, and the smooth plastic of her laptop keyboard beneath her fingertips.

"No promises," he had told her with that exact same smile.

She left three days later. He followed them out to the car, carrying her bag for her. Her parents thanked him, shook his hand, and he waved as they reversed out of the crowded parking spot, kept waving as Hermione's dad rushed to the ticket machine, red-faced at having forgotten to pay for parking.

Four days later he was at the Grangers' when Hermione's parents were at work. "Day off," he'd told her, his ears going red. She'd smiled and invited him inside.

The relationship did not last long. Whilst Hermione was (as always) meticulous in her workings, seeing him out forty-five minutes before her parents were due home and disposing of condom wrappers in the public bin on the high street, she knew that forbidden things were always found out. In the same way that she stored away her secrets, terrified that her parents would read her mind, she was similarly frightened of being caught unawares, and having what little control she had stripped away from her. Add in the fact that they had started speaking more - between awkward, pale sessions between her nobbly cotton sheets - and it was becoming clearer and clearer that actually, he really  _did_  understand why she had been in hospital in the first place. Their last meeting, during which he'd asked her if she ought to check herself back in ("I'll get to see you more," he'd said, still - always - smiling) had her blurting out to her parents at dinner that evening that she was seeing someone. "Who?" her father had demanded, a speck of chicken escaping the corner of his mouth. "Isn't it a bit early?" her mother had asked.

"A nurse," Hermione had replied demurely. "And I'm starting to think so."

Her parents exchanged poisonous glances, knowing full well which nurse she meant.

Hermione never saw him again. In a fit of enveloping guilt (distracting her from the always-nagging feeling of wrongness that she was finally learning to swallow up, jam deep down into the pit of her stomach), she rang the hospital but was told he'd gone on holiday, and a few weeks later that he no longer worked there. She half-expected a police officer to show up on her doorstep, demand to talk to her relating to a "sensitive investigation," but one never did. She Googled him once, the only closure awarded her the fact that the computer had no clue what had happened to him, either.

She Googled Snape, too, the moment she arrived home from Grimmauld Place - but he was nothing but a village in Suffolk, with six hundred people to his name.

* * *

Her parents weren't home. Hermione was both relieved and nervous at this revelation, and confused, her mind not yet accustomed to the oppressing darkness of mid-winter (had the sun even risen today? She couldn't remember).

It had taken twenty minutes - minutes spent walking from one underground station to the other under the guise of the second being the most direct route home - for her to decide whether or not to bring him here. She had changed her mind at least four times, her nerves only settling once he sat down next to her on the District Line, looked up at the advertisements plastered to the wall above the windows, and loosely folded his pale hands together, as though them sitting on the train together - in adjacent seats, even, though the carriage was mostly empty - was the most natural thing in the world.

They spoke little on the walk to her house. She was curled up in her coat, the paper of the poppy chaffing her neck beneath her turned-up collar, as Snape walked beside her with his hands stuffed in his pockets. She wondered if the neighbours would see them walk up the drive to her front door. She watched the windows, waiting for the flick of curtains, but the adjoining houses were dark, no one yet home this early in the day.

She was proud of herself for not fumbling with her keys. She was less proud of forgetting to undo the deadbolt and swearing as she rammed hard against the door with her knee. "Are you all right?" Snape asked. Hermione didn't answer, just grumbled as she shoved her key into the deadbolt and let him into her home.

"Shoes off, I'm afraid," Hermione said. "Mum's just had new carpet put in."

She bent down to undo her laces. The belt of her coat was fastened too tight; it winded her, and made all the blood rush to her head. Bright spots dotted Snape's black coat, and she felt breathless as he carefully, silently shut the door after them.

"Tea?" Hermione asked. She was balancing on one foot, prying off her other shoe, praying she wasn't about to see his hand reach sideways and slide the deadbolt back into position whilst a manic gleam lit in his eyes.

He kept his hands in his pockets, his expression unreadable. "Please," he said.

She disappeared into the kitchen.

Her thoughts boiled along with the kettle, bubbling, agitated, ready to explode. Crookshanks came in, mewling for food. Snape followed soon after, looking curiously at the cat's bottle-brush tail sticking straight up into the air, only hooked slightly at the tip, like a question mark.

Snape didn't even say anything but Hermione felt duty-bound to defend her pet.

"She's a Persian," she said. "Her face is just flat that way."

"Did I do something to offend?" Snape asked, drawing out a chair and looking at her for permission. Hermione flicked her fingers and the kettle clicked off; he sat, and she nearly dropped a mug as she threw open the cupboard door.

"She doesn't look it, but she's very clever," Hermione said. "The lady at the shelter said she'd been there for six months, because no one wanted her, even though female gingers are so rare."

"I can't imagine," Snape said, and Hermione bristled, feeling as though she was being made fun of; the anger died down immediately when she felt the little nip of cat teeth at her calf, reminding her that she still hadn't slid bits set in jelly into the bowl by the refrigerator.

"Bugger off," Hermione told her, and the cat disappeared into the sitting room with a jingle of her bell.

"Kept bringing in mice," she told Snape, who was obviously bored of talking about the cat. "I'd find them stuffed inside the folds of the morning paper. Quite terrible, actually. Milk?"

"Please," Snape said.

Finally, Hermione fell silent as she sat down across from him at the breakfast table. She'd forgotten the sugar bowl, but Snape hadn't asked for it, and she didn't feel brave enough to climb to her feet to retrieve it.

"Sorry," she said.

"What for?" he asked, staring into the swirls of his tea.

"Being nervous," she said. She glanced at the kitchen clock - they'd been in her house for ten minutes and he still hadn't tried to murder her. A point in her favour, she supposed. Or against it. Half a point each for her delusions and her sense.

"What do you do?" she asked him, not lifting her tea to her lips - not at all confident that she could drink without spilling it down her front.

"I work in academics," he replied.

"Oh!" she said. She set her mug down and fanned her burnt fingers.

"You sound surprised," he said.

Hermione blushed. This was becoming an embarrassing habit.

"And you?" he asked.

"Oh, bits and bobs. I've floated around a bit since I finished school."  _Translation: I've been useless since I failed my A-levels_. It was a transgression she still couldn't forgive herself for. Her parents hadn't either, though they rarely admitted it. "I worked in a bookshop, actually, on Charing Cross Road, but was laid off last year."  _I was fired after my parents and employers decided I was spending too much time loitering in the fantasy section and bending back all the spines._ "So," she continued, her voice chipper, "have you ever been sectioned?"

Snape choked on his tea. She half-expected a sputtering  _I_ beg  _your pardon_? but it didn't come. Instead, he coughed into his sleeve and said, "Have you?"

"For a bit," she admitted. "I had a sort of…accident."

He pressed his lips together and leant into the back of the chair; it creaked beneath his slight weight. "I'm afraid I haven't," he said. "Not really."

"Oh," Hermione said, selfishly disappointed.

"Most likely for want of family than for anything else," he added.

Hermione started - she hadn't even thought of him having family. Knowing that she had been right in not thinking about it made her feel quite sad, rather than wary.

"Your parents must care for you a great deal," he said.

"They do," Hermione replied, wondering if that was bitterness in his tone. She shifted, her knee (the one still feeling quite bruised) pressing into the narrow leg of the kitchen table.

"So," Hermione said. "This."

"This," Snape agreed. He set his mug down and folded his hands on the table, narrow face patient, waiting.

"What is it?" she said.

"I don't know if it's anything," he replied. "Not really."

"You could just be stalking me," Hermione conjectured.

His lips twitched. "Or you could be stalking  _me_."

"Unlikely," she said, and chewed hard on the inside of her cheek. He may have frowned - she didn't notice. "Statistically, women are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators."

"Only one of us in this room has been sectioned," Snape said, and Hermione scoffed.

"I wasn't a danger to  _others_!" she protested. She laughed, and Snape visibly relaxed - she wondered if he just realized he might have offended her. Coming from someone else, it would have.  _Why hasn't he?_

"I apologise," he said. "This is new to me."

"What is?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said, and finally, he smiled at her.  _Not handsome_ , Hermione reminded herself, though the slash of his mouth made her palms start sweating, her heart stutter forward, like she had just broken into a sprint.

She finally took a sip of her tea. Too bitter. She slid it aside.

"When did it start for you?" she asked him, and wiped her palms on her skirt.

"I'm not sure what  _it_  is," he replied.

"You know what I mean," she said.

He sighed. His fingers were obscenely long, threaded through the handle of his mug, only the faintest lines of her old school's logo curling between his knuckles.

"There wasn't really a point of starting," he said. "I've always felt…off."

"How?" Hermione asked.

Snape shrugged, uncomfortable.

"It was over six years ago, for me," Hermione told him. "I was eighteen." He seemed to start at that - she wasn't sure why. Had he thought she was younger, or older? Why did he care? "And everything sort of went to pieces after that."

Snape's fingers were going white, his circulation being cut off. "I wasn't afforded that luxury," he said.

"Sorry?" Hermione replied.

"I don't really fit in," Snape said.

"Spot on," breathed Hermione, relief swelling in her chest.

"But I don't know if that's a problem in particular to my…beliefs-" Snape continued. "-I really don't know if that's the right word, by the way - or because I'm unfortunate enough to be rather uneasy with people."

"I was never popular," Hermione said, "even before I was in hospital." Hermione's face tightened. "I have a history of pedantry that never endeared me to my classmates."

"As do I," Snape said, and allowed her another of his small, frightening grins.

Hermione started, suddenly remembering through the onslaught of nerves what they'd come to her house for. "Back in a moment," she said. She scooted her chair out, feeling a bit lightheaded, panicked for a moment that Snape had somehow managed to spike her tea.

She made it to the top of the stairs without fainting, and didn't hear any sign of him following after. She held her breath as she pulled out her under-bed drawer and rifled carefully through, her ears pricked, waiting for footsteps other than the cat's. Nothing but the scratching, wintry fingers of branches against her window.

Then, downstairs: "Hermione?"

"Just a moment!" She found it stuffed beneath her exercise kit (little used), shut with ribbon tied in a very particular knot.

She nearly fell down the stairs on the way back, and arrived panting in the kitchen with the notebook wedged beneath her arm, only to stop in the doorway, frozen.

"Mum!" she said.

Mrs Granger was not smiling. She was standing in the middle of the kitchen, her handbag clutched tight in her arms, slick, blond hair (so exactly unlike her daughter's it was almost comical) pulled high in a pristine bun, her face tight with worry.

Snape was on his feet by his chair, leaving his mug on the table: a mortal sin in the Granger household. Her mother had noticed, her eyes fixed on the wet ring it had made on the wood.

"I should be going," Snape told Hermione.

"Pleasure to meet you," Mrs Granger told Snape, her voice dry, and Hermione realized with a slick, sweet, heavy feeling in her stomach that the two of them might be around the same age. She hadn't thought of it at all, when they first met, barely even when he sat down across from her at the pub - it seemed stupid, only now realizing that he was  _old_. Not ancient. Not on the cusp of death. But middle-aged. Forty, at least. She could read the words as though they'd been written on her mother's alarmed face:  _Too old for you!_

"We're not seeing each other," Hermione blurted out.

"No," Snape agreed. "We share a common interest."

"No!" Hermione cut in, knowing that was the last thing her mum wanted to hear. As far as Mrs Granger was concerned, for the past six years, Hermione had had only one true interest, and it was  _not_  to be encouraged.

Snape pushed past. The front door opened. A draught blew through, making Hermione hug herself - she realized she'd never taken off her coat; the poppy still chaffed the sensitive skin of her neck.

He was on the front step, the door already closing before she could even wish him goodbye, her mother's worried expression immovable, before Hermione shouted, "Wait!" and ran after him. She shoved the black notebook - her old diary, marked with  _1998_ in the corner of the leather cover - into his hands. "Here," she said. "Take it."

"What is that, Hermione?" Mrs Granger asked from the doorway of the kitchen, Crookshanks winding about her ankles.

"Something I've been working on," Hermione said, her eyes never leaving Snape's. "I want you to look at it, and let me know what you think."

His thumb fell between the front pages, wedging it open as far as the ribbon would allow.

"I will," he said.

"Goodbye," Hermione said.

"Goodbye," Snape replied. He stepped back, and Hermione closed the door so slowly, with such an ache in her muscles, that it felt like she was shutting a door between worlds.

She was on the wrong side.

Her mother threw the deadbolt and turned on her, hands on hips.

"The study," she said. "Now," and Crookshanks mewled a traitorous agreement from the kitchen table, her yellow eyes aglow.


	4. Charing Cross, Revisited

**Chapter Four**

_**Charing Cross, Revisited** _

Something bothered him about the cat. In retrospect, he supposed there were several things that  _should_  have bothered him about the cat - the fact that the girl had continued babbling on about it chief amongst them - but she had read his silence incorrectly as disinterest. He was not disinterested (as, to be honest, he usually was with people's pets), but, rather, confused.

Mostly because he was absolutely certain that Crookshanks ought to have been male.

He'd meant to ask, before they'd been interrupted. But still, while the girl had her delusions (he kept telling himself, when he was trying not to listen to the rumblings in his own mind), she was not stupid, and she would have known full well the sex of her own pet. It was ridiculous for him to feel so strongly about the matter, as well - why did he care?

 _Because it's not the right cat_ , he thought to himself, at least three times, before dismissing the thought as absurd.

There was a drawing of it, on the inside of her diary - that's all he'd had time to see, as well as her full name in pen beneath the pencil ( _Hermione Granger_ ) before the Tube became too crowded to read and he had to stuff it into the inner pocket of his coat. He spent the remainder of the journey back to Charing Cross pressed up against a tourist wearing a massive rucksack, leaving barely any room for breathing, never mind flipping through the book she'd given him, studying the handwriting, looking for clues.

He found himself back at the pub, wishing she'd appear, knowing she wouldn't. It was busier, with plates of beige food leaving in a constant train from the kitchen double doors. He ordered a sparkling water from the grumpy woman at the bar and found a seat by the toilets.

He pushed his drink across the table, wary of spilling on the pages, undid the knot he'd tied too tight on the train (he barely had the nails for it), and spread the diary open in front of him. The spine didn't crack at all; the edges of the pages were worn. It was a diary for the calendar year, generic with cheap paper, the  _1 January_  crossed out in pen on the first page.

Her handwriting was tiny and neat; she'd even titled it:  _Magic or Madness?,_ as if it were a dissertation, and not something she'd hidden in her bedroom, away from the eyes of her worried parents. The only amateurish features were the drawings: the cat on the inside cover, done in smudged pencil with an overlarge body and an even flatter face than in reality; and a few more creatures part of the way in: a unicorn, or a griffin, half-way between paragraphs, as though she had to stop and think, or sketch in order to accurately convey what was in her mind.

It was otherwise so tidy that he wondered if she had source material: notes scribbled down to provide an outline, to organise her ideas.

"D'you mind if I take this chair?" someone asked him and he jumped. He glanced up, flicking the diary closed; his look must have been dangerous, because the man paled before disappearing back to the other side of the room, cheekily with Snape's other chair in hand.

Snape flipped back to the first page and finally began to read.

 

 

> _I strongly believe that it is illogical, when one is experiencing an odd turn of mind, not to keep a record of events. And I am most definitely experiencing an odd turn of mind._
> 
> _Symptoms are primarily loss of concentration, insomnia, fitful sleep, and loss of appetite. Mum and Dad attribute it to A-Level stress, as does my form tutor. Which I think is odd, considering I've never thought so little of exams in my life._
> 
> _Are dreams symptomatic of something? Are nightmares? What about nightmares where one wakes up feeling cold, and empty, as though the happiness has been sucked out of them, leaving them with screams in their heads? I suspect something may be wrong. I don't want to worry my parents. I will wait a week, and if there is no change, contact the doctor's surgery for an appointment. I suspect, and fear, it may be depression. Brilliant timing_.

 

The next entry was dated a fortnight later.

 

 

> _Mum and Dad are worrying about me. I think my tutors might be becoming angry with me, as well…Dr Albert has accused me of ignoring my studies during leave, and of wasting his time with e-mails asking questions not relevant to my maths exam. I don't even remember sending half of them. Mum is taking me to visit a psychologist on Wednesday, which I am looking forward to with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm._

 

A few lines below, she'd scribbled in, more hastily:

 

 

> _Psychologist is a quack. Was wearing a paper bead necklace and drinking herbal tea and asked me if I've ever heard of Ian Stevenson, who is, according to the few sources I can find, a psychiatrist studying past lives in children. I told Mum. We won't be going back._

 

Someone came in from the toilets, the door swinging open on groaning hinges, and a chill draught cut through, tugging at the cuffs of Snape's trousers and sneaking through the holes in his knit socks. He glanced at the signs on the wall, arrows pointing the way to the toilets and the courtyard, as if pleading with people to take their smoking outside on a freezing night like this.

It was almost like the letters in  _Courtyard_  glowed.

His chair scooted back, catching on a hole in the ill-advised carpet. He nearly ran into someone coming out of the ladies', and took a wrong turning and ended up almost walking into the back of the bar. He turned back, thinking he should know better than this but not knowing why, and took a left at the end of the corridor.

One more door and there it was, just like he'd known it would be. A little stone courtyard with bins and a patio table stripped of its umbrella, folding chairs leaning against its rim.

He stood there, his hands in his pockets, and stared at the facing wall.

_This is stupid._

What was he expecting to happen? That the bricks would rearrange themselves and take him to someplace new? He was a man of science. Sort of. And his thoughts, as always, were taking him to a frame of mind he did not want to inhabit. To be here was a weakness; to be entertaining these thoughts was just going to take him further down the rabbit hole of self-pity and land him in the chair at a psychiatrist's office, or worse, in hospital with  _her_.

It made him feel better to take one of the chairs out from the table and unfold it against the wall.  _An empirical test,_ he told himself. It was flimsy but he was lighter than most men - it groaned and swayed beneath him but did not give way. The wall still ended a few inches above his head; he had to hook an elbow on the lip of the wall and pull himself up with his arms, his heart racing and his mouth dry before his eyes, at last, reached the top, and the air wooshed out of him, his lungs collapsing in his chest.

It was nothing.

Nothing but an alleyway, like any alleyway, the backs of shops with loading docks for chain stores, dark now that they'd shut for the night. Snape felt as though he'd gained five stone in those few seconds as he dropped himself back to the chair, landed wrong and tilted sideways into the bins - he leapt off, misjudged and stumbled into the table, while the bins and the chairs clattered to the ground all around him.

 _Bollocks_.

At least no one came for him as he limped back inside. He didn't even walk into the bar on the way back, and his table was still free. Furious, he flung the diary back open (carelessly - he heard a tear of pages from the spine), and flipped open to the next page, looking for something to prove wrong.

Only to find that she'd taken charcoal to it, smeared lines down the page, a black, hanging blob that blocked out the lines beneath.

He snapped the cover shut, suddenly cold. Exhaled, wondering why he couldn't see his breath. His fury had instantly leached away - suddenly all he could feel was the pain in his thigh, the ache in his bones, and a high note in his ears, like the highest pitch of a scream cranked up two octaves, and drawn out to a thin, single note.

He limped to the bar to order a hot chocolate, then sunk back into his chair and shivered, as though he'd never be warm again.

A few minutes later the chocolate arrived with sprinkles and whipped cream. He spooned it off on a plate and gulped down the first burning, chalky swallows as if it were medicinal. He felt instantly better. Buoyed, he opened the diary once more, carefully draping his gloves across the offending page, and took a deep, shaking breath, wondering where his resolve had gone.

The next entry was only a list of words, written in joined up script quite unlike that on the previous pages:

 

 

> _Fluxweed_
> 
> _Knotgrass_
> 
> _Lacewing Flies_
> 
> _Leeches_
> 
> _Horn of Bicorn_
> 
> _Skin of Boomslang_
> 
> _A hair_
> 
>  
> 
> _What does this mean??_

 

The people around him erupted into cheers. He hadn't even noticed that someone had put a football game on the television. A middle-aged-woman lurched toward him, drunk off her tits already with a cigarette dangling from one hand, and slurred, "You all right, sweetheart? Somethin' botherin' you?"

"No," Snape said, hurriedly tucking the diary away, but not before the woman said, "Writin' a book?"

"No," Snape said again. He shoved the half-empty chocolate mug across the table, as if it would ward her off. It didn't - she reached for the chair that had once been on the opposite side of the table from him, and then realizing it wasn't there, stumbled toward him, grabbed onto the table, and lowered herself into his lap.

"You look sad," she said.

Snape didn't move, afraid what his body would do if he did.

"I assure you I'm fine," he said.

Her thumb found his chin. "Such a long face."

"I'm afraid I was born that way."

She laughed. Her teeth were surprisingly white. She brought her cigarette to her lips and pulled.

"You seem lonely," she said, white, sulfurous smoke leaking from her mouth, dragon-like.

"I get by."

"What a pity," she said.

Without warning, she took a hold of his hand and brought it into her lap, palm-up. He tried to tug it away, tried to get up, but she was heavier than him, and she didn't seem to notice his struggle.

She traced the creases of his palm with her fingers.

"Would you like your fortune told?" she asked.

"No," Snape said, yanking back and finally managing to loosen her grip, but she still had a hold on his sleeve cuff, his button caught between her short fingers.

"Why?" she asked. Her eyes were black-rimmed and liquid. "Don't you believe in magic?"

A second later and she was on the ground, shouting, "Oi!" and a few men were on their feet by the bar, fury on their faces.

Snape walked out without a word, praying they wouldn't come after him.

 _Fool_ , he told himself.  _Idiot_.

This wasn't helping. He didn't know why he thought it would, coming to London. What was he expecting? For years of unease and sorrow and feeling as though something was missing to just slide away, for the plain ordinariness of life to be pulled aside, like a curtain, to reveal there was something underneath that he'd never thought to think of, a mirror that would reflect his true self, what he really was, beneath the plain clothes, the frustration, the sour face and powerlessness?

_Don't you believe in magic?_

"Can I borrow a fag?" a tramp asked from the entry of the underground station.

"Absolutely not," Snape muttered to himself as Charing Cross Road disappeared behind him.

She was mad. The girl was mad. She'd said it herself. She could be a stalker, tried to deflect the accusation by proposing it herself. She could be following him, goading him, setting him off. Someone could have set it up, trying to rattle him.

 _She knows,_ his brain told him.

"She's delusional."

A woman standing next to him shoved to the other side of the carriage.

The signs for King's Cross/St Pancras appeared a heartbeat later. He didn't even remember changing lines.

_Why are you scared? Frightened of learning the truth? Afraid that there's something in the world that you don't understand? Something you've forgotten?_

"It's not real."

His ticket home was in hand, creases forming between his fingers. The train was on time, already there, nothing stopping him from getting on now, disappearing up north, never coming back. Settling down to a normal life, ignoring the odd intricacies of his brain, pretending she didn't even exist.

He was nearly run over by a trolley, a mother with her children, and another strange sensation slid into place, a tingling crawling across his scalp.

He looked up.

She was there.

Hermione Granger was there, bag in hand, standing between platforms nine and ten, and she was smiling.


	5. Go North

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you so much for all the wonderful feedback. I've been a bit pathetic and ill for the past few days and your kind comments have kept me motivated to work on the next chapter. Hope you enjoy it...and don't worry, there should be a few answers (perhaps one or two) coming in the next few installments.

**Chapter Five**

_**Go North** _

 

The fact that she'd managed to find him no longer seemed odd; the fact that she seemed happy to see him, however….

"Perhaps your conversation with your mother went better than I thought," he said.

"Not necessarily," she replied. She clutched her bag, the smile sliding away. "But it wouldn't have done, would've it? Not at this point."

"I suppose not," he relented. They were standing at an awkward distance apart - far enough for passengers to feel comfortable walking between them, noticing too late and making apologetic faces whilst they half-ducked the two steps from one side of their conversation to the other. Snape couldn't bring himself to move closer to her. It would have felt, he thought, like admitting to something.

"Besides," Hermione said, "I can only stand to be told I'm wrong so many times." She tucked a wild curl behind her ear and lifted her chin. "I'm not accustomed to it, and I won't stand for it."

Snape stuffed his hands into his pockets, hunching into the collar of his coat.

"Where will you be going, then?" he asked, wanting this conversation to end.

Her eyebrows furrowed. "With you," she said, with an implied  _of course_. "Any objections?"

 _Millions_ , Snape thought. "Why?" he said.

Another family passed between them, and, frustrated, Hermione took a hold of Snape's sleeve and dragged him closer. Her fingers lingered on his cuff a little too long before he tugged his arm out of her grasp, tired of being manhandled by strangers. This conversation - this conversation that he'd never intended on having in the first place, that he'd left in an effort to specifically avoid - was going somewhere he hadn't expected. And, judging from her expression, would continue in the manner she had determined.

"I can't do this anymore," she said, dropping her hand back to her side. "It's too much."

"I wasn't aware you were doing anything," he said.

"That's my point," she snapped, his irritation rubbing off on her. "I'm wasting my life, and spending far too much of my precious time completely caned on medication I'm prescribed because everyone tells me I'm wrong. And now you're here…" She had a hold of his damned sleeve again. "…and I know I'm not.

"I'm an adult," she breathed, "and I bloody well think it's time I acted like one."

She was so proud of her speech. He could tell. She must have been storing up those words for years, practicing them in her head, readying them for the right moment. She must have always imagined she would recite them to her parents, not to him - though, thinking about it, he supposed she might have, before she came to meet him here. It would explain why the colour in her cheeks was so high. He could imagine her pacing about in the kitchen, having refused to give ground to her mother's demand to retreat to the study. She would be gesticulating wildly, fighting her side, wanting, for once, to be heard, wanting someone to understand her.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Snape said.

Hermione's bright eyes flashed. "Why not?"

"It's not healthy," he said. "What we're doing."

"Is it hurting anyone?" she said.

He bit his tongue; droplets of coppery blood slid between his teeth.

"Not yet," he said.

Her eyes widened. "Please don't tell me that's a threat," she whispered.

"What? No!" Snape protested, his face reddening. "Of course not. I'm not a monster."

She relaxed, but her fingers still fiddled with his sleeve button. "I have some money," she said, "savings for university. Unused, obviously. I can pay for my board, and help about the house - we just need a research base, don't we? To find out what's going on? And I do feel rather compelled…that is, I think it's best for us if we go north."

"Hermione-"

An announcement came over the loudspeaker; Snape's train was about to leave, high-pitched beeps signalling that the doors were about to slide closed and stay that way.

"May I?" she asked with an upward glance.

Those eyes.

Those  _bloody eyes._

"Do you trust me?" he asked.

Why did he say those words? Her eyes were wide again, her senses most likely telling her, quite rightly, that what she was asking was wrong, that what she was wanting was wrong. Clever girls didn't meet strange men in pubs, clever girls didn't bring strange men to their homes, and they certainly didn't propose moving in with strange men in the name of research.

"Enough," she said, her fingers closing hard on his sleeve.

"Come," he told her. He took her hand, and they broke, together, into a run.

 

* * *

 

He didn't know how she could sleep, with the grind and chug of the train, the bubbling conversation around them, the continuous Tannoy announcements and the shuffling of millions upon millions of shopping bags being stuffed into and pulled out of the overhead compartments. But sleep she did, while Snape sat next to her, pressed against the opposite armrest so their legs didn't touch, and continued to read her diary.

He was glad she was asleep, so she wouldn't be watching him, wouldn't watch his face undoubtedly colour as he reached passages he rather thought that no one should ever read (and he couldn't help but think -  _isn't she too young to be reading this sort of filth, never mind writing it?_ ). She had a thing for gingers, apparently, and felt duty-bound to recount her experiences in excruciating detail.

By the second of such entries, Snape couldn't bring himself to carry on, so he stuffed the diary back into his coat pocket, ordered a tea and a paper from the surly gentleman with the trolley, and spent the rest of the journey trying hard to ignore her.

"Cokeworth," she murmured when Snape nudged her awake at the end of the line. "This is where you live?"

"Is that a problem?" he asked gently.

He half-expected her to snap back with a  _yes_ (he would have if he were her, comparing her unexpectedly verdant London suburb to his cold, industrial town), but she only said, yawning, "It seems unlikely."

He offered to carry her bag for her, but she refused. She was under-dressed for the north Midlands ("Basically Yorkshire," she'd commented when they stepped outside the train station, though with less venom than he had expected at seeing the tall chimney dominate the skyline across the river). She wouldn't take his scarf, either. Instead, she shivered as they walked in silence to Spinner's End, and she didn't make one comment as he pushed open the door and turned on the front entry light, only for the bulb to blow.

"A charming welcome," Snape said, and Hermione's reply was either a shiver or a giggle - he couldn't tell. "Make yourself at home," he told her.

She went inside, shucked her shoes even though he told her not to bother, and found her way into the lounge, coat still on, bag still slung over her shoulder.

"Toilet is under the stairs," Snape said, stumbling for thoughts of what to do. He wasn't even used to entertaining, never mind having someone keen to move in with him. "I'm afraid there's no bed in the second bedroom, but the sofa isn't so uncomfortable." He blushed, as though he'd made a major error, and added, "Though you're welcome to the bed. I can always sleep down here."

"No, thank you," Hermione said, finding her way to the doorway of the study, poking her head inside. She found the switch and gasped as the overloaded bookshelves appeared in full, buzzing light.

"That's the study," Snape said unnecessarily.

"It's beautiful," Hermione gasped.

Snape blushed, and so did Hermione as her stomach gave an audible rumble.

"You're hungry," Snape said. He froze, realizing he probably had little more than a packet of pasta and a tin of beans in the cupboard. "Er-"

"I know," she said. She unzipped her bag, began pawing through her clothes. "I could really do with some Indian. I saw the one on the corner. What do you think?"

He didn't say anything, and she looked up, the light hitting her from the side, setting her frizzing curls alight. "Do you not like Indian?" she said, her eyebrows raised.

"That sounds agreeable," he replied, his voice hoarse.

"Lovely," she said. She found her purse and shoved it into her coat pocket. "My treat."

She'd already gone into the corridor before she made a noise of surprise, dashed back into his study, and studied the shelves for twenty seconds before picking out one of the largest books that Snape owned and tucking it beneath her arm.

"Be back soon," she told him with a smile.

She somehow managed to align the front door so it shut all the way behind her, and on her exit, a breeze swept through, wet and dank and chill, and Snape rather wondered if he knew what he was getting himself into.

 

* * *

 

Hermione had grown quite adept at forcing down her frustrations as she grew older. As a young girl, she had developed an unhelpful tendency to wear her heart on her sleeve, making it all the easier for her adversaries - the brainless bullies in lower school, her rather cleverer academic rivals in upper - to unhinge her confidence, and make her feel that perhaps her drive, her ambition, and her insatiability for knowledge was something to be ashamed of, rather than proud. If there was one thing that Hermione was thankful for, it was that  _it_  had happened at the end of school, when she wouldn't have had to face her classmates as well as her parents as her firm hold on reality became more of a desperate, weakening grasp.

Her newfound ability to hide her emotions was a bane to her parents. Her mother had said as much in the few minutes before Hermione took her bag and left: "You used to tell me  _everything_ , Hermione. Why are you scared to, now?"

Hermione had not told her where she was going. Actually, that was a lie - she had told her that she would be spending the night at an old boyfriend's (ginger, librarian, harmless) and would perhaps see her tomorrow, if she felt she could hold a conversation without shouting. Mrs Granger had not liked that, but hadn't said another word as Hermione packed her bag, with as much maturity as she could muster, and walked out the front door without saying goodbye.

Now, hundreds of miles away, Hermione could feel that long-held resolve crumbling, and was having a rather hard time keeping her voice steady as she placed her order at the front register, and an even harder time keeping her focus as she opened Snape's book to the first page, only to find it was an old chemistry textbook, several decades out of date.

She tried her best to read, but kept being distracted - the odd pedestrian (even odder now that it was growing late) passing by the window, inches away from her face; a cat sitting on the kerb, its tail twisting as it watched an old woman and her terrier pass beneath a lamp on the other side of the street (Hermione's heart panged, remembering she'd left Crookshanks behind, but she knew her parents wouldn't let her starve). Hermione was growing impatient, her stomach rumbling, when the bell on the door chimed, and a sweet voice greeted the bored men behind the register with a friendly, "Good evening, how are you?"

Hermione looked up, her thumb holding her place in the book she wasn't reading. The men were smiling, charmed, and the woman had her back to Hermione, dark red-brown hair struck through with an odd strand of silver drawn into neat ponytail at the nape of her neck. Hermione's  _other_  alarm was ringing bells, sirens, bright lights going off in her head. Her tongue stuck in her mouth as the woman placed an order and the men behind the register asked after her husband, her children, and she answered with faux-exasperated, "They're fine, they're fine. Eternally starving."

Finally, she took out her newspaper and sank into a chair three down from Hermione, her trim legs crossed, her face hidden behind a large picture of yet another disgraced politician on the front page of  _The Guardian_. Hermione shuffled in her chair, placed the book aside, and cleared her throat.

The woman looked up from her paper, the edges folding down to reveal startling green eyes and a pretty, pert nose, dusted with freckles.

"Excuse me," Hermione said, and the woman raised her eyebrows. "Have we met before?"

The woman pressed her lips together, her expression humouring. "I don't think so." She flicked her paper back up but Hermione pressed on.

"I know this is an odd question," Hermione said, "but can you do magic?"

"What, like parlour tricks?" the woman said. "I'm afraid not." The smile disappeared, her brows furrowed. "Are you well, darling? Do you need help?"

Hermione reddened and dragged Snape's book back into her lap. "I'm fine."

The book opened, and the paper was smoothed back into position. That, apparently, was the end of that.


	6. Of Magic

**Chapter Six**

_**Of Magic** _

 

Snape froze at the bottom of the stairs, dressing gown hanging about his bare feet, the air wet, cold, and clinging.

There was a shuffling, a small sigh from the lounge, and a turning of pages.

 _Hermione_ , his mind reminded him.

He ran back upstairs, ignoring the questioning, "Snape?" from the lounge, then reappeared a few minutes later in a jumper and trousers. She was sitting on her makeshift bed of the sofa, swaddled in duvets and looking as though she was still in her pyjamas, lap completely swallowed in books pulled from the shelves of his study.

"I was thinking-" she began as soon as he walked into the room, groggy and wanting tea. She didn't even look up at him, her attention never faltering from the pages. "-perhaps we need to start forming a few possible hypotheses, then establish the method through which we can test them and…." She looked up. "Sorry," she said, her small smile appearing - she no longer seemed insistent on hiding her front teeth. "Tea first."

"Tea first," Snape grunted in agreement, and went to put the kettle on.

The windows in the kitchen had iced over. He scraped at the pane with his fingernails ( _need cutting_ ); they were frosted on the inside.

"Perhaps we'll have a white Christmas, this far north," Hermione said, and Snape jumped. He hadn't realized she'd followed after him.

"Perhaps," he relented, and took two mugs from the kitchen cupboard.

He didn't say any more, and wanted her to say nothing - nothing about the kitchen, with its 1950s fixtures wearing away at the hinges, in bad need of replacing. Of the Formica worktops and pistachio fridge-freezer that would fail spectacularly in any energy-efficiency rating scales. It switched on just as the kettle finished boiling, and he half-expected her to look at it (it leant to one side, one of its feet having given out in his childhood) and say, "You're destroying the ozone layer, you know," or, "Are you poor?" but she didn't, and only accepted the mug gratefully, not even complaining that he had no milk for her tea.

"Should've stopped by the shops on the way home last night," she said instead. "Sorry."

"No, it's my mistake," he replied, feeling terribly proper. The kitchen was too narrow; there was nowhere to sit down. "Shall we go back to the lounge?"

He pulled up a chair to her sofa and made a few trips back and forth as she reminded him to fetch her diary, then wondered if he had any road atlases, and they settled across from each other, rapidly cooling tea in one hand, completely unrelated books in reach of the other.

"I don't understand," Snape said, flipping open the previous year's  _Great Britain A-Z._

"I'm not sure I do, either," Hermione admitted. She bit her lip. "I thought of something right before I went to sleep last night, then lost it when I woke up this morning. I usually keep a notebook by my bed, but, well-" She nodded toward the diary beneath his mug.

"You can have it back," he told her, sliding it out from beneath his tea.

"Not yet," she said. "Just wait. It will come back to me."

They sipped their tea in relative silence until even the dregs were gone. The lounge was chilly but neither of them went to turn up the radiator any higher. Snape wondered if he ought to light a fire, then when the last time was that he'd had the chimney swept. A vivid, disturbing image (strange, considering his imagination was never praised as particularly inventive) lit in his mind: Hermione, sleeping here on the sofa, invisible beneath her reverse-princess-and-pea stack of duvets, swallowed up in flames as the fire spread from the fireplace to the basket of kindling, caught on the dry paper of the study, set fire to the carpets and the oiled furnishings. But, no - there was so much damp on the walls (she hadn't commented on that, either) that it was sure to extinguish before it even started.

"Is something funny?" Hermione asked, and Snape started.

"No," he said, and flipped to the map of North Wales.

It was only a minute later when she announced, high and clear: "I think we should give  _it_  a name."

" _It_?" Snape asked.

"You know what I mean," she said, shoving one book aside in favour of another. "I was thinking…perhaps we need to form a basis, something we accept as fact, even though it seems absurd. Maybe we need to assume, hypothetically, that  _it_  - that  _magic -_  is real, and we have something to do with it, and perhaps, for some reason, we've forgotten it. So our questions would be, firstly, why have we forgotten? And secondly, how do we get it back?"

"Do we want to get it back?" Snape asked, his own mind running about twenty clicks behind hers.  _Magic_? Is this what she was thinking, then? Mystical powers? The girl was mad. Completely off her rocker. And here she was, on his sofa, in his home, after he'd invited her in-

"Don't even pretend to act scandalised," she scolded him, reading his expression as easily as one of his dull, huge books. "You're just as deep into this as I am."

"What?" he said.

"And why  _wouldn't_  we want it back?" she said, indignant. "Can you imagine, being able to manipulate things in such a way, to help people…" She trailed off, her eyes distant, and Snape felt the fingers of his right hand begin to tingle, reminding him rather oddly of soldiers' stories of amputations, and how feet would itch years after they'd been cut off.

Hermione hadn't finished her sentence; he thought he had almost heard it in the air:  _Can you imagine being given such power?_

"Though I suppose that's just conjecture," she said. "We don't know what it means. Not really. Only that it's something outside of ourselves, and that we, for some reason, are aware of it, when other people aren't." She laughed. "Maybe we're witches."

"Hermione…" he warned her.

"Look," she sighed. "Human beings have been reaching out to the metaphysical for millennia."

"But this isn't religion."

"No," she agreed. "This is something…else. I feel stupid calling it magic, but what else is there to call it?"

"Power?" Snape suggested.

"I don't like that word," she said. "It's too easily abused."

"Why do we have to give it a name?" he said. "Why do we have to call it that, _magic?_ " He didn't like how the word formed in his mouth. It felt childish, narrow, full of polyester capes and wand-waving over top hats.

"Because," Hermione said, her expression darkening, "giving it a name makes me feel like I'm less of a lunatic than everyone thinks." She slapped the cover of her book closed, her curls catching in the puff of air from the pages. "And, I might add, most likely applies to you, as well. So we will call it magic. Is that agreeable to you?"

"Yes," Snape replied, not able to make his voice sound anything but begrudging. "Fine."

His fingers tingled again. Itched at the very tip.

 

* * *

 

They went through a scattered morning routine in stages, showering and breakfasting (he found bread in the freezer) piecemeal, coupled with numerous cups of black tea. At some point they both made it upstairs to the spare bedroom ("This is the  _second_  bedroom?" Hermione had said upon entering, finally commenting on the state of the house. "How massive is yours?" Then she had clammed up and collapsed red-faced in front of his computer. Snape didn't bother to tell her that this had once been his parents' room and he would challenge anyone to be able to sleep in such a place - it was none of her business).

Snape logged her in to his laptop, and Hermione sat, her palms pressed to his keyboard, chewing absently on her lower lip. Then she started, and said, breathless, "Do you have internet?"

"Yes-"

The mouse flew to the icon on the screen and she double clicked; her fingers dashed impatiently against the keys as she waited for it to load.

"Sorry," Snape said. "I need a new one."

She ignored him. "I remember," she said instead. She didn't elaborate, only typed into the search bar the name of the pub they had visited on Charing Cross Road. "There might be something that the pub and Grimmauld Place have in common," she said as the website began to grind to life. "I looked it up before I left Mum and Dad's. Grimmauld Place - where we were standing? Between numbers eleven and thirteen. I thought it was alternate numbering, and the even numbers would be on the other side of the street, but it isn't. There is no number twelve."

"The walls could have been knocked down between them," Snape said, struggling to keep up with her runaway train of thought.

"Eleven and thirteen are the same size," she said. "And the rest of the street is full of As and Bs…they're dividing the houses into flats there, not joining them."

"Right," Snape said. "But it could be a mistake in the numbering."

"Yes, but I was thinking…" Hermione continued, impatiently waiting for the pub's webpage to appear. She frustratedly clicked through to the  _Contact Us_ page, then, triumphant and smiling, pressed her index finger to the screen. Snape bent closer, at an awkward angle so he didn't touch her, and she moved her finger down so he could read  _The Cross Keys, London_.

"No number," Hermione said. "Not even a street name. Just a postcode."

"But it's on Charing Cross," Snape said, feeling like he was in freefall, unexpectedly losing what seemed to have become a battle of wits.

"It's set back a bit from the road, possibly predates it," she said. She clicked back to the search results, went through to the telephone listings only to find the same address. "You'd still think it would have  _some_  sort of location marker," she continued. "At least 'Something Court' or 'Blah Blah Alley.'" She sat up straighter and rubbed a finger across the bridge of her nose. "Seeing as those are the two places we met each other, without prior arrangement, don't you suppose that means something?"

"So...one place doesn't exist, and one place doesn't have a proper address," he said. "That means something."

She grunted, frustrated with his hesitation. "It  _means something_ , Professor."

There was a pause, and he asked, "What did you call me?"

"Pardon?"

"I believe you just called me 'Professor.'"

"Did I?" She clicked through to another page, unfazed. "Well, you did you say you worked in acadaemia…."

"I'm not a professor," he said, though something warm glowed inside him at the thought.

"Sorry," she said, and she asked, "What am I meant to call you, then?"

"Severus," he said. "Just Severus."

"How Roman," she remarked absently. She shook the mouse; her foot jingled beneath the desk. So much energy, so much excitement - how on earth was Snape meant to keep up?

"Right, Severus," she said, practicing the name. "Did you bring up the road atlas? I have an idea."

That smile appeared once more, and Snape, much to his surprise and his hesitance, felt himself growing rather excited to hear what Hermione Granger had in mind.


	7. Best Laid Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Happy New Year to all Gregorian calendar adherents! Thank you so much for the kudos and kind comments. Apologies for the delay in updating - I've been in a mince pie coma for the past few weeks. More to come.

 

**Chapter Seven**

**_Best Laid Plans_ **

 

It was Hermione who had assigned separate maps, but Snape who suggested separate rooms. Hermione was hesitant to accept, answering his, "It's better to keep ourselves from the other's influence," with a somewhat begrudging, "I suppose."

It was childish, her unwillingness to leave. As if she left the room, he would disappear along with it.

She tucked her map (another copy of  _Great Britain A-Z,_ six years older than the one open on Snape's lap) and went to the door, only for him to give her a small, flat smile and say, as if he could read her mind, "I'll still be here when you get back."

The lounge was freezing again, and the sun too low and the houses across the street too high to allow in much light. She turned the reading lamp back on and huddled beneath the nest of duvets on the sofa, ramming her back up against the armrest, biting down on her lower lip as she turned to the first page.

Her earlier confidence was rapidly depleting the more she tried to make herself focus on the page numbers.  _This should work, shouldn't it? s_ he thought. But she wasn't sure. She wasn't in a fugue state the first time she went to Grimmauld Place; she wasn't in a trance. She didn't know  _why_  she was on that particular Underground line at that particular time, going in that particular direction, but she knew where she was going, and when she looked at the map later, from the safety of her locked bedroom, she could point out exactly where she had been. She'd asked Snape and he'd reported the same - he hadn't planned to go, but he had known where he was going. His trips to London were last-minute but too long to not have been noticed. And when she'd held up the map of London and asked him to show her where he'd been, the point of his finger landed on Charing Cross Road, exactly where she wanted it to.

But alone in the lounge, the more pages she flipped through, the less she felt inspired.  _This is stupid_ , she thought instead, furious with herself.  _I'm a blooming nutter_. Her heart stuttered, her face flushing with guilt - her mum didn't like that word; Hermione's supposed sensitive mental state had helped to make the Granger Family List of Unacceptable Words rather long.

"Absolutely batty," Hermione whispered to herself, feeling strangely satisfied at the self-abuse.

Snape had been the first person in so long to outright call Hermione mad. But  _he_  hadn't looked at her as though she was crazy when she held up the two road atlases and said, "I propose an experiment." Rather, his features were so tense, his dark eyes so sharply focused, that he had seemed… _excited_.

Wound tight.

But respectful, reverent. Like he understood her.

It had been so long since someone had. Such a long time since she'd felt such companionship, and he wasn't even in the room. It didn't matter. Hermione rode that rush to the next page, scribbled a circle in blue highlighter. Her thumb traced east. A draught moved through the room, the scraggly hedges outside the window taking the brunt of a sudden wind, the chill rush of air guiding her fingers up through Cornwall, Devon, Somerset. Even inside, among the earthy scents of an old house, Hermione could've sworn she could taste the tang of snow on the wind.

Another circle.

_Woodsmoke, musk._

And another only an inch south of the second.

It was dark by the time Hermione had finished, and her stomach was grumbling. She looked at her phone - it was three o'clock, and she had four missed calls, all from her parents. She tapped out a quick text ( _All okay. Just need time_ ) and shifted the duvets off of her, stretching her back and holding the road atlas up to the light. The pages were dotted with little blue circles; she traced them with her finger, playing connect-the-dots with the tip of her nail. She could remember drawing them - the flick of the wrist, the sour smell of the marker pen, the squawk of it across the paper - but if Snape asked her why she marked what she did, she would have no idea what to tell him.

"Hermione?" he called from upstairs. "Are you finished?"

"Yes," she said. She cleared her throat and licked her lips. "Be up in a moment." Her thumb hovered, aching as it edged across the north of Scotland. "Tea?" she asked brightly, pressing so hard into the paper that she left a dent.

Snape's voice was a desperate sigh: "Please."

 

* * *

 

Their map was complete. To another person, it would be inelegant: a mess of blue highlighter and black-pen stars on a road map canvas. To Hermione, it was a masterpiece.

They'd started far south, at the tip of Cornwall; Hermione had felt unease when he looked at her blue dot and said, "No, not on mine." The same for a countryside village in the hills of Devon. She moved on to the next, watching his face as he gazed down at her fingers, watched him swallow. He glanced back at his own page, where a yellow spot highlighted a space just a few millimeters off of hers.

"Almost," he said.

"Close enough," she replied, heart beating hard in her throat.

Her hands had started shaking as they carried on through the pages, roads, bits of green and yellow; places they didn't share were fairly numerous, but the places they did….

"Remarkable," Snape said, as Hermione scribbled another star on top of her blue dot in Wiltshire.

"I told you it means something," she said, trying not to sound too pleased despite the fact that she felt nearly drunk on her own cleverness.

A minute later she had drawn another star in the Forest of Dean, and again just slightly south of it. A few more places in Central London, grouped around Charing Cross Road and Westminster. Islington, for Grimmauld Place, of course. She insisted on a star in Leeds but he just shook his head, then snorted when she pointed to Cokeworth.

"I don't know!" she defended herself. "It seemed silly not to."

"Yes, well," Snape said, flipping to the next page, "I can assure you, there is nothing magical about this place."

Hermione only had two dots north of York, both in northern Scotland.

So did Snape.

"Well, that sorts it, then," Hermione said. She crossed her legs and scribbled the final two stars on her map. "Empirical proof that we're not mad."

"Shared delusions," Snape said, but he was smiling (a bit).

"Of course," Hermione replied. He mind was buzzing, her fingers clutching the map so hard that her nails would leave marks.

Suddenly she didn't know what else to say. Their eyes met; Hermione swallowed, squirmed, suddenly terrified of the next words that would come off his tongue. For a second, she thought he might say nothing. Refuse to open his mouth, to let the admission out.

To tell her she was right.

He didn't say anything for a moment. Instead, his long finger slid down her map, coming to rest on a star in the West Country, right on the crest of her upper thigh.

"Well, Miss Granger…" Snape said, pressing the star into her skin, a sharp indent that to her tortured mind felt hot with her desired praise, "…do you want to buy the train tickets," he asked, "or shall I?"


	8. The Odd Couple

**Chapter Eight**

_**The Odd Couple** _

 

Mrs Jones was used to having strange people come to stay in her little bed and breakfast near the Forest of Dean. She wasn't judgmental, mind - and she well could have been, considering the strange sorts she had seen.  _She_ was never going to be in the news for refusing to let a nice gay couple stay in her best double bedroom. To be fair, her husband would have minded, if he were there, but he was dead, so it didn't really matter what he thought, anyway.

However, with most couples coming through (holidaymakers, usually, most often during the summer - those too soft to find the campsite down the road to their comfort), she could understand the match - most often they were alike in looks if not in mind or social graces. Prostitution was never a problem in her little inn (or if it was, she very well couldn't tell), and she always thought that her hand-crocheted doilies would make an odd background to an illicit tryst.

So when these guests came inside and pulled off their shoes so as not to trod mud on her carpet - after ringing ahead only twenty minutes before they arrived, wondering if she had space - she was, perhaps, just  _slightly_  confused.

They were an odd pair, the girl nigh-on twenty years younger than her companion, but she far too modestly dressed (and with hair far too large) to be anything unsavoury, surely. And while Mrs Jones was used to exchanged glances when she asked questions about room preferences, or if they would prefer the full English at breakfast or the continental, she had not expected them to turn to each other with careful, low conversation, as if they were sharing state secrets.

"I'll leave you to it, then," Mrs Jones said, beckoning her Bichon Frise back into the kitchen with her.

She hovered by the door for a while, never very good at looking busy when there was nothing to do (a dull episode of  _EastEnders_ was still glowing, muted, from her telly in the sitting room), and waited, wondering what on earth they'd come to her for. She could still hear the sound of their low whispering in the other room, as if breakfast was serious business.

Surely  _this_  was nothing untoward? Not this close to Christmas.

The bell rang. She reappeared on her stick, puffing a bit, not wanting it to look as though she'd been eavesdropping (she would if she could - damn her failing ears). The girl was holding out two folded banknotes in her hand, as well as their guest card. "We'd like a room with two singles, please," she said. Mrs Jones must have frowned because the girl asked, "Is one available?"

Mrs Jones blinked at them, more blood than she thought she had left in her old veins rushing to her face, and said, "Oh yes, my love, of course." She selected one of the keys from her ring and handed it over. "Up the stairs, first door on the right. En suite and everything. Hope you find it to your liking."

They both hesitated for a moment, the key clutched in the girl's palm.

"Breakfast on the card?" Mrs Jones said, only having to briefly glance at it to find that it was. She didn't move, instead waiting for something…some sort of clue. For them to tell her anything, really. A bit of gossip, if they'd be so kind to entertain her.

"Yes," was all the girl offered, plainly confused.

"May I," Mrs Jones said, her voice craggy with phlegm. She cleared her throat and started again, her smile slipping a bit. She needed to re-stick her dentures in place. "May I ask what brings you to these parts this time of year?" she asked. "Bit cold for exploring."

"We like the cold," the gentleman said, the first words she'd heard him speak. His voice was alarming, deep and rotund.  _Far_  too old for the girl. And they weren't obviously related, at least not by blood.  _Curiouser and curiouser._

"Visiting family for the holidays?" Mrs Jones asked, for some reason unable to let it go. Even her dog knew better; Henry had a hold of the hem of her skirt and was dragging her backward into the kitchen, perhaps in hope that while she was there, she'd remember to fill his neglected food bowl.

"No," the man said, only for the girl to hold up the key, say, "Thank you very much. We'll see you in the morning."

"Sleep well," Mrs Jones said, slipping smile still in place. "Let me know if there's anything you need." She edged back into the kitchen, shutting the door only partway behind her.

Henry was looking at her from his bowl, eyes wide and accusatory, as the two pairs of footsteps shuffled up the stairs above their heads.

"Odd," Mrs Jones told her dog. "Very odd."

Henry blinked and nudged his empty bowl forward, his only reply, while upstairs, the door slammed shut and the lock slid firmly in place.

 

* * *

 

Severus Snape had not shared a room since…well…not in a very long time. And with a woman…good god, it had been so long, his virginity might've well grown back.

Of course, this wasn't like that. Not at all. He had tried to be a gentleman (as well as he could, in any regard) and offered to pay for a room of his own, but Hermione only levelled him with an incredulous look and a lifted eyebrow and said, in a whisper, "Can you afford that?"

His silence had been the only answer she needed.

"We're both adults," Hermione had said. (Did she have to smirk like that?) "If you promise to stay to your bed," she continued, "I'll promise to stay in mine."

So there he was, kicking his things beneath a single mattress in a dim bed and breakfast in almost-Wales, with a girl twenty years younger than he was. A girl who wouldn't shut up.

 _And_  he had a headache.

Hermione turned on him. She was folding her things away, as if she was packing in for a long winter. "I was thinking-" she began. Of course she was. She was always thinking. "-that we ought to go into town tomorrow morning to take a bit of a look around. Tourist information, libraries-"

She kept talking even when Snape turned on the TV. It was as though she didn't realize, or was waiting for him to rectify his rude mistake, but three steps and thirty seconds later, the television was on mute. Her hands were on her hips, her grip on her pockets too loose to be angry.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

Snape blinked at her slowly, and she rolled her eyes.

" _What_?" she insisted.

"It's too much," he replied, trying to find the volume button on the remote - all the markings had worn off except for  _record_. "My brain is about to leak from my ears. I need rest."

"You,  _professor_?" He wished she would stop calling him that. Mostly because the words seemed to bite, after it first slipped from her mouth: when he caught his bag in the door of the train when leaving Cokeworth; after he'd tried to pay the bus fare with a fifty pound note. Around her, he was bumbling, apparently. A black-clothed slapstick act, his natural scowl only adding to the comedy value.

"Why don't you read?" he suggested. "I'll keep the volume down."

She didn't protest. She only stood there, her hands gradually slipping from her hips, the faux-anger similarly sliding away. Only when he craned his neck to find a better view of the evening news did she sigh and trod back to her bedside, collapse so hard that the springs squealed, and turn her back to him, the crack of a book's spine the only sign she'd started reading.

He didn't remember turning the television off, nor the lamp, for that matter, but what seemed like minutes later, after he'd only closed his eyes for a moment, the light had changed, grey rays of a cloudy morning slipping sideways through the thin curtains of their room. The plastic alarm clock on the bedside table said 7:32 AM in bright, angry letters. There was a clatter downstairs - pots and pans, a sizzle, their full English being prepared. But that wasn't what had woken him up.

There was a whimper from the other bed. Hermione still had her back to him, but she was a lump under the duvet, a thick braid snaking across her pillow.

Snape lay still, holding his breath, watching the curve of her shoulder, the line of her neck, her chin, waiting for them to move.

Another whimper. A twitch. A slurred and muffled, " _Nooo_."

"Hermione?" Snape whispered.

" _No_ ," she whispered, and her shoulder gave another twitch.

Carefully, quietly, Snape slid from his bed (when had he crawled beneath the covers? Had she tucked him in?) and crouched down at Hermione's side.

She was really only an outline of a girl: wild hair, high cheek, long neck, the bulky duvet clutched around her middle. Snape's eyes slowly adjusted until he could see her finer features: the way her mouth gaped open, large front teeth nudging against her lower lip; the rapid movement of her eyelids beneath wide, furrowed brows.

Her mouth opened more, formed a word:

"Ron," she said, and pulled the covers up to her neck.

"Sorry?" said Snape.

" _Ron_ ," she repeated, then suddenly, her eyes snapped open, and she jolted back across the narrow bed, only for Snape to react likewise and dash the back of his head against the wall.

"What are you  _doing_?" she shouted as Snape clutched hard at his skull, wincing.

"You were talking in your sleep," he replied, easing himself to his feet; if he crouched much longer, his knees would give out. He have his head another careful rub, and the pain ebbed. His hair stuck to his fingers. He needed a shower.

"No, I wasn't," she said. She sat up, looked blearily at the bedside clock. "What did I say?"

Snape frowned.

"What?" she insisted.

"You said 'Ron,'" Snape told her.

"'Ron,'" Hermione repeated, eyes wide.

"There were a few moans, as well," Snape told her, his head giving an embarrassed throb. "And a 'no.'"

"Well  _that_  bodes well," she said. Snape didn't even know where the notebook in her hands came from, but she had plucked it from thin air, apparently, and was scribbling notes onto one of its crowded pages. "Was there anything else?"

"No," Snape replied. He nearly moved to sit on the edge of her bed, but thought better of it and went to his own, lowered himself across from her, the bedsprings protesting. "Were you dreaming?" he asked.

"I suppose I must've been," she said, jotting down another note and snapping her book shut. "I can't remember."

"Who's Ron?"

"No idea," she sighed. She glanced at him, looking unaccountably angry from behind a loose, frizzing curl. "Did  _you_  dream?"

"I don't even remember going to sleep," Snape admitted, trying hard not to groan as he reached down to pull on his socks.

Hermione didn't answer. He looked up to find her blushing again.

Oh god. She  _had_  tucked him in.

"Breakfast is ready," he told her, in case she hadn't noticed the canonfire of pots and pans downstairs.

He pulled on another sock. Hermione didn't move.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"I…" She ran her palm across her cheek and looked determinedly at the far wall, as though examining it for a smear of his blood. "I feel…sad."

She turned once more to face him, her eyes glowing with tears.

"Breakfast," Snape said, summoning a grimacing smile. He pulled himself up and offered her a hand, which she ignored. She didn't move as he went to the door, slid aside the lock, waiting. "Smells…interesting," he encouraged her.

"I'll be down in a moment," she told him, and sunk so low onto the mattress that she was nothing more than a lump beneath the covers. "Start without me."

"Fine," Snape agreed, and shut the door after him, rather wishing he hadn't heard her start to cry.


	9. The Forest

**Chapter Nine**

_**The Forest** _

Severus Snape was in a foul mood.

Hermione knew exactly why, as well. She'd been at the foot of the stairs when she heard the slide of plates across a table, Snape's deep, murmured, "Thank you," and Mrs Jones's much louder, highly grating voice:

It was a laugh, at first, a nervous one, followed by her asking, "Will your friend be down soon? You can be a bit intimidating on your own, can't you?"

There was a pause, as if the woman was waiting for an answer. Hermione stopped behind the mostly closed door, biting her lip, not quite sure she wanted to interrupt.

"I'm not being funny," Mrs Jones continued. There was a pop of a sealed jar opening (or perhaps Snape had just thrown a swing and sent her dentures flying - but a jam jar seemed more likely) and the scrape of a knife on a plate. "It's just - you have the look of a serial killer about you, I think. She softens you a bit."

 _My cue,_ Hermione thought, swinging the door open and smiling, hoping it still didn't look as though she'd been crying. Snape would never forgive her if they gave the woman even more fodder for her weekly supermarket gossip.

"Good morning," Hermione said brightly. "Sorry, took a bit too long in the shower."

"'Morning," Mrs Jones said, face glowing red with embarrassment, as though Hermione had found her chatting Snape up rather than insulting him. "Sit down. I'll be out with your breakfast in just a moment. Help yourself to some toast."

She disappeared back into the kitchen.

"Feeling better?" Snape asked without interest as Hermione lowered herself into the wicker chair across from him.

"Feeling murderous?" she chirped.

He buttered his toast, scowling.

"I think we should take a break today," she told him. "At least mentally. This might be the only clear day we have - I think we should head into the woods."

"I don't even know what we're looking for," he said, refusing to look at her as he shoved mushrooms onto his toast with the back of his fork.

"Isn't it obvious?" she asked, perfectly aware she was being just the slightest bit insufferable, and delighting in it. "Other people. Like us, I suppose."

"You think there are?"

"Shouldn't there be? It can't be just us."

"People," he said. "Just standing in the middle of the woods."

"I don't know. Maybe!" She took a bite of toast, chewed, swallowed. "I know it's stupid."

Snape opened his fingers, palm up, as if to say,  _Isn't this all_.

"And if not other people," she said, "then at least something that can help us…remember."

He met her gaze, glowering at her.

"You marked the map, too," she told him. "We wouldn't be here without you."

"Don't remind me," he said, and took a long, steaming sip from his tea.

 

* * *

 

Snape looked slightly less grumpy in his wool hat, but Hermione certainly wasn't going to tell him so, if only not to fall prey to the irritation that no doubt lingered beneath the brim. They stood at the end of a farm access road, on the edge of a footpath; he had the torn page of the map in his hand, and an Ordnance Survey unfolded beneath it. They were approximately two miles off of Hermione's spot, and at least another quarter-mile from that to Snape's. The weather was fine, as promised, snap-cold and their breaths frosty. She had remembered her compass, but forgotten mittens.  _Forest for the trees._ She handed the compass over with frozen hands.

"Girl Guides?" Snape asked, balancing it in his palm.

"Yes," she admitted, wondering why she ought to be embarrassed. "And Duke of Edinburgh, though I gave up after the bronze."

"You certainly do plan ahead."

Hermione chose to accept that as praise.

"Well then," she said, holding aside a blackberry vine and gesturing him forward. "On we go."

Considering how their morning had started and Snape's forbidding mood, Hermione had committed herself to the idea that the day would be largely spent in silence, so it surprised her when he helped her over a stile, promptly let go of her hand, and asked, "Did you lose someone in the war?"

His gaze had flickered to her lapel, and it took another moment and a downward glance for her to notice that he was referring to her poppy.

"Oh," she said. "No. I mean, a great uncle, but I never met him. Obviously."

"Remembrance Day was a while ago."

"I know," she snapped, surprised to feel tears springing to her eyes. She had thought she'd shaken the odd mood, having forgotten the feelings just as suddenly as she'd forgotten the dream. "It just feels…wrong to take it off."

Snape pressed his lips together, then slid the compass aside to check their bearings. "Next path on the left," he said.

It wasn't. He grumbled; they turned back and re-oriented themselves, then pushed on the path ahead. The forest was starting to close in. Part of Hermione remembered the Forest of Dean as it was when she was there with her parents years ago, with its brambles and nettles and hogweed. She had no reason to remember it otherwise - she was a Londoner, after all - but even in winter, with the bare branches and scratching twigs, and the soft, sinking ground below, it seemed strangely - coldly - familiar.

"It's the following left, after the corner," Hermione said, hands going numb, cheeks stinging with cold. She shoved her fingers deeper into the pockets of her woolen coat.

Snape flicked the map, checked the compass, and gave a begrudging nod. They walked for a few more minutes in silence, before the question exploded from her mouth:

"Have you seen  _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_?" she asked.

Snape gave a confused grumble. "Seen what?" he said.

"It's a film. Came out a few months ago."

"I don't go to the cinema," Snape replied.

"Neither do I," Hermione said. "But as far as I know, the premise is that the two main characters are in a relationship and elect to have their memories of each other erased after a falling out."

"Sounds terrible," Snape commented, still scowling.

"It does, a bit," Hermione replied. "Surely every opportunity is ripe for  _learning-"_

"Do you think that's what's happened to us?" Snape asked. "We've had our memories erased?

"I don't know," Hermione said, then gave a small, bitter laugh. "I  _never_  know, do I? I'm so tired of not knowing."

"I don't have any pieces of my life missing," Snape said. "Not to say I remember every detail - no one does, do they? But everything adds up, unfortunately. And there are bits of it that I wouldn't mind forgetting."

Hermione's eyes narrowed. She knew her expression was prying; as expected, he didn't give in.

"It would have to be something really awful," she said, "for me to want to forget it."

Snape licked his lips but didn't reply. They walked a few paces, following the icy clouds of their breaths, leaf mulch and twigs crunching underfoot. In springtime, the forest would undoubtedly be awash with bluebells, the forest floor a shimmer of purple. They'd been gone the last time Hermione had been there, camping with her parents, when the change of season had brought with it yellow petals, white, puffy nettle flowers. Laughing and hiking and reading books under torchlight, while her parents carried the telescope all the way from the car and pointed out the planets in the clear, cloudless night sky.

"Past lives," Snape suggested, the words coming out so fast it was as though he was embarrassed to say them.

"You've been talking to my old psychologist," Hermione said with a laugh.

"I did see it, in your journal," Snape admitted. "What if she's not wrong?"

"It's bunk."

"I think so, too," Snape said, "but so, theoretically, is the existence of magic."

A few more paces. She buried her chin in her scarf.

"I don't either," she said, latching on to his earlier comment, then clarified, "have things that are missing. I remember everything I should. I know what's happened in my life - it's not like my memories and my parents' don't add up. It's just my…perception, I suppose, that's not right. Sometimes I think things work the way they shouldn't. Or it's feelings…" Her voice caught, and she cleared her throat. "Who in the  _world_ is  _Ron_?"

Snape didn't answer, and she was annoyed, as though he should've been able to. They pressed on in a new uncomfortable silence, the footpath narrowing so they had to walk single-file, stepping over vines, avoiding puddles and soggy quagmires of mud. Hermione was getting cold and perhaps almost as grumpy as Snape, annoyed even more by the fact that they had so much to say, so much to talk about, but she didn't even know how to start.

Snape stopped so suddenly Hermione nearly ran into the back of him.

"Wha-" Hermione began but Snape shushed her, his long gloved finger pointing in the air, then off into the bushes at the left. Hermione's eyes followed the trajectory, then saw…

 _Oh_.

A deer.

A pretty, white-speckled fallow deer, a doe, feasting oblivious among the greenery. Snape hadn't struck her as a great appreciator of wildlife, so couldn't understand why - oh, for goodness sake, he was starting to  _follow_ it now, creeping through the wood as quietly as he could, his hand behind him waving, telling her to stay where she was.

In just a few minutes, the deer was gone, and so was Snape.

 

* * *

 

Silver trails on the forest floor, like snail paths, lifted from the surface, hovering in the air. Dark trunks of trees, scratching branches. His footfalls were silent, every twig avoided, every squelching mud puddle bypassed. The doe, too, was silver, silent, waiting, wanting him to follow.

Weeds and ferns, reaching brambles, low tree branches scratching at him, grabbing at his clothes as he passed. He wasn't being quiet anymore. He was frantic. Chasing, paddling through dirt.

Every corner turned, she was there, but only for the shortest of moments, the faintest of glimmers, the flicker of a ghostly silver tail.

He was breathing hard when he emerged into the clearing. He thought once,  _Hermione_ , but he didn't care. The doe was gone. For a moment, he felt strange, disembodied, like  _he_  had been the deer. Light-headed and hunched over as though he'd been walking on all fours.

There - a pool, still and reflective. He crawled to its edge, looked inside, expecting to see a long silvery face, big, milky, unblinking eyes. The glint of something red and silver at the bottom, sparkling like rubies in the dim light.

It was just his own sallow skin, his mouth hanging open. His breathing laboured, his breath a mist in the air.

Human.

He punched the water and his image vanished. A hollered curse sent birds scattering from the trees. Snape collapsed onto a stump and buried his face in his muddy hands.

"Professor?"

He looked up. Hermione.

"What?" he spat.

"You left me," she said, her face impassive, as though he weren't covered in mud. "I found my spot. There's nothing there. Only a clearing."

A pause, a high, grating, "Did you see something? Did something happen?"

"No," Snape lied, staring at her hard.

"Wasted trip," she said, dejected. She reached her bare hand out for his. "Come," she said. "Let's go back." Her hand fell, empty, back to her side. "I won't make you talk about it if you don't want to," she said.

Snape almost liked her for a moment, until she added, that little prying smile emerging, "At least, not until you're ready."


	10. Dark's Hollow

**Chapter Ten**

_**Dark's Hollow** _

 

They didn't talk. Hermione wasn't sure what part of her expected he  _would_  say something—that part was surely foolish. She didn't know Snape well, but from what little she knew of him, she should have realised that he wasn't the sort to gush about his feelings.

Just in case she didn't arrive at that point, he was there to remind her the two times she tried (her, "Do you want to talk about it now?" growing ever quieter) with an increasingly venomous "NO."

It was made worse by the fact that she knew something  _had_  happened. She'd found him splattered with mud with his head in his hands by a pool in the forest, after he'd started chasing after a deer for no particular reason. She'd even told him that, "You know, they're quite rare, here, deer. They cause damage to the plant life so they try to keep the numbers down. We're very lucky," and yet she hadn't managed to get a rise from him at all, despite the fact that she knew he would bristle at the over-information.

He was even quieter after the after-lunch hike in the other direction (away from the marks on their map—"For control purposes," Hermione had said, though in truth she just wanted to escape from Mrs Jones). By the following morning, he was barely saying anything at all.

They caught the bus after breakfast. Hermione paid for his ticket because he was still only carrying large banknotes, like he didn't know how money worked, and she tried not to become agitated over the fact that he made no promises to pay her back.  _Socially inexperienced_ , Hermione reminded herself as he plopped down in a seat in the back of the empty bus, then, less kindly, added,  _Jerk_.

He sighed as she slid in next to him. She began conversation as though he weren't ignoring her.

"Dark's Hollow," she said, shaking out the Ordnance Survey map. "If any place is going to be magical, surely with a name like that—"

"I wager five pounds the most interesting thing about it is that the Post Office opens for a half-day on Saturdays."

Hermione looked at him blankly.

"Was that a joke?" she said in disbelief.

"No," he replied, and turned to look out the bus window.

Hermione was feeling nauseous by the time they reached their stop, the undulating roads and pot holes doing all sorts of nasty things to the heavy full English in her stomach. Snape had fallen asleep—she had to knock him in the shoulder and scream at the driver to stop, as though their life depended on it, because he was about to close the doors and drive off again.

"Last bus is at three o'clock," the driver told her, annoyed already as though he'd end up waiting for her, then drove off, the doors still hissing closed, while Snape blinked up at a pristine limestone pub, said, "I'm going to spend the day by myself. See you at two fifty-five," then walked off without her.

 

* * *

 

He hadn't slept well last night. It had been difficult to align his brain on the right neurological paths, to coax his breathing into a smooth, regulated pattern. It was made worse by the fact that Hermione seemed to have fallen asleep as soon as her bushy head hit the pillow, so still beneath the covers that every so often, he would hold his breath, listen hard, just to make sure she was still breathing.

He didn't know why he was worried. About death. About her dying, in particular. It had been so long, he supposed, since he'd had a relationship beyond nodding to a hardened neighbour at the shops. She wasn't even his to lose; she was no more than an odd roommate, really, thrown together with him because of a shared disquiet of the mind. Her parents were right to look for her, he thought. If she were his daughter (the idea was laughable, and unsettling), he would have worried about her running off with someone like him, too.

She woke up once, when he was staring at her. She had gasped, frightened, then whispered, "What?"

Large brown eyes in the dark—for a moment, Snape could have sworn they'd flashed green.

"Sorry," Snape said, and turned over in his bed, set on sleeping, only able to do so an hour after her breathing had slowed.

"Are you looking for someone?"

Snape jerked in his seat to find the barmaid leaning toward him, messy, graying hair a curly mass about her head, floating around her shoulders, sticking to the condensation on the taps.

Snape glanced toward the door and took a sip of his drink. He barely even remembered stepping inside this pub. He wondered where Hermione had gone. Probably the library, he thought. While he sat at a bar, on what must have been his third pint, and it wasn't even midday.

His stomach churned.

"No," he said. He rolled his shoulders and pushed his half-empty glass across the bar. There were only three other people in there; career drunks, most likely. All dressed normally. He wasn't sure why he expected otherwise—what did he think they'd be wearing, pointy hats?

He wished he could do this professionally. Straighten his tie and push a business card across the bar, demanding quiet, succinct answers, or he'd take her to the station downtown (Hermione had fallen asleep to his 80s American crime drama the night before). Instead, he called for her—she didn't hear him, and he cleared his throat, said, "Excuse me," again, and waited for her to finish unloading a box of glasses onto a shelf before she came back to him, her expression bored.

"What sort of place is this?" Snape asked, and cringed internally. "Dark's Hollow," he added. "Odd name."

"Oh, it's legendary," she replied, her glum expression brightening, her dark eyes shining with a copper glint. "One of the most haunted places in Britain, actually.  _And_  it's legal to shoot a Welshman if he steps foot on our streets after dark."

"That's why I sleep in here!" A Welsh voice slurred from the fireplace, and the drunks laughed.

"Haunted," Snape said, his pulse quickening. "What do you mean?"

Did she just roll her eyes? "Haunted," she said. "Ghosts. Ghouls. Et cetera."

"Ghosts," Snape said. "You believe in that sort of nonsense?"

Her colour heightened, her lips pressing tight together. "You're the one asking questions."

"Where's the tour?" Snape asked.

She had the gall to laugh at him, though she tried to turn it into a cough.

"Leaves from the war memorial at half eleven. You'll probably be the only one on it, today." She looked at her watch, then back up at his drink. "Can I get you another quick one? Something stronger to take the edge off?"

"My edges are sufficiently smooth, thank you," Snape said, and the barmaid rolled her eyes again.

"As you wish," she said. "But you better chug it down. Moira isn't one to wait around for stragglers."

Moira seemed exactly the sort to wait around for stragglers. Snape could only identify her by her badge—she could've been any old woman sitting on the war memorial, reading a tatty romance novel, oblivious to the cold. He was surprised, though, that Hermione wasn't already there—he had more than half-expected to find her alongside Moira, notebook open, shooting off questions like a future star reporter badgering her way to new career heights.

Snape cleared his throat. Moira turned the page and read at least three paragraphs more before she looked up. Snape expected a smile (though he hardly ever welcomed one), but one was not given. Instead, her mouth hanging slightly open, her voice surprisingly high and breathy, Moira said with a Glaswegian lilt, "Are you here for the tour?"

"Yes," Snape replied, thinking he ought to offer some explanation as to why, but could come up with nothing that would make him appear less absurd. "How much is it?" he said instead.

"By donation," Moira said, her face expressionless except for the minute twitch of regret as she packed her book into her handbag. "All goes to the renovation and reopening of the Dark's Hollow Museum."

"Ghost museum?" Snape asked.

She didn't hear the irony in his voice, and replied, "General history." She looked from his face to her watch, then looked up again. "I don't except we'll be having anyone else. Are you ready to begin?"

She took him down the high street, beginning with the butcher's shop (a Victorian meat merchant still haunted it at nights, she told him—sometimes the tenants above could hear the clatter and scrape of hooks dragging across the floor). She said this all before she led him inside, then continued to place her order for a half-pound of beef mince, to be put on her account. "Next," she said, between licking crumbs of sample cheese from her fingers, "we have the corner shop."

Snape was becoming increasingly convinced that the schedule of the tour had been carefully adjusted to fit the timing of Moira's weekly shop. By the time they popped into the bakery, he found himself carrying two plastic bags, and Moira shouldering a mostly empty hessian sack while she waved to the rows above the opposite side of the high street, pointing out the black-beamed flats above a row of antique shops.

"Excuse me," Snape said, growing cold, tired, and exhausted of being talked at. Moira jumped, as though she wasn't used to hearing other people speak. "Could you please tell me," Snape said, trying to keep the snarl out of his voice, "where the name of the village comes from?"

"The name?" said Moira. She blinked at him and pushed her glasses up her nose. "Dark's Hollow."

"Yes," Snape urged her.

She was silent for an agonisingly long time before finally saying, "You see," she said, "it's an old story. Folklore." She frowned at the war memorial, then spotted a bench a few feet behind them. She backed up and lowered herself onto it, dropped her bags onto the ground, and waved her hand. Snape assumed that was her invitation to sit down, though she pressed herself against the opposite arm so that there was a clear few feet between his narrow hips and her ample ones.

"Well, you  _must_  know who the Dark is, of course," she said.

Snape said nothing, though the word inexplicably made him shudder.

"Why," Moira said, breathing in sharply, "it's  _Death_."

Another beat.

"Dark's Hollow," Snape said, a chill flooding his tongue. "Death's Hollow."

"We've gone through a few name changes," Moira said, "though I can't think of the original for the life of me - not a native, you may have noticed - but for the past several centuries at least, that's the name we've been known by. Well, Death's Hollow, not that long ago, then when they realized it wasn't the most attractive to tourists—"

"Why, though?" Snape said. "Where did the name come from?"

"We were a plague village," Moira said, her blank face finally creasing into something resembling sadness. "As were many villages, in this area. We were quarantined, you see." She pushed her glasses up her nose again and sniffed. "Was a death sentence for near everyone. They didn't know what caused it back then. The story was that it was brought by Death himself, through the forest into our little hollow in the woods, and he knocked from door to door and greeted every inhabitant with a kiss, then found himself an empty house and made himself at home."

She ran the back of her palm across her lower lip.

"Folklore," she said. "Before they knew about blood-borne pathogens."

"Mm," Snape agreed.

"So that's where it came from," she said dismissively. She swept her knees with her hands. Snape wished they had kept standing—he had to readjust her shopping, and the carrier bags were starting to leave deep red grooves in his palms. Moira coughed and tugged her handbag back onto her shoulder. Snape was rather surprised he wasn't carrying that, too.

"Shall we carry on?" Moira asked.

They did. More stories, more shopping, until every supernatural trope in existence had been thrown onto Snape's deadened ears. He rather wished there was at least one other person to weather this with him—preferably Hermione, who would no doubt begin to laugh from the merest exchanged glance.

"Pardon me," Snape said, interrupting their trajectory toward the other side of the village. Moira had been talking so long that he had barely registered where they were—down a residential street from the village square, the war memorial still in full view. She came to a halt and doubled back to him, where he stood at the gate of a slumping black and white cottage, peering down at the plaque on the bars.

"Bagshot House," Snape said. He pointed at the plaque. "Is this on the tour?"

"Never thought I'd have someone more interested in names than ghosts," Moira grumbled.

"It sounds familiar," Snape said.

"There are those  _Lord of the Rings_  films—Bag End?"

"No," Snape said, having no idea what she was talking about.

"It's only a house," Moira said, eager to push on, already taking a faltering step backwards.

"Did someone important used to live here?" Snape said.

"No," Moira replied. "And if they did, I would know."

"Has anything unusual ever happened there?" he pressed on.

"Not really." She clawed at the handle of her handbag and pressed a dent in the mud with the the tip of her boot. Despite her assurance that Bagshot House was nothing out of the ordinary, she continued, "It's nothing, really. The landlord always lets it out to idiots. They never last very long."

Snape was silent, waiting for her to continue.

She sighed. "It's the last ones - no, the tenants before, I think - but the imbeciles must've brought it in. Found it running around the attic like it owned the place. Can't imagine how it must've got in if they didn't bring it in themselves, but they swore up and down they had nothing to do with it. Probably terrified of losing the deposit."

Snape blinked at her. "What on earth are you talking about?"

She huffed, a slack-skinned finger pointing to the roof. "In the loft," she said, her hand shaking. "Must've been twenty foot long, at least. A big, gigantic  _snake_."

Something cold fell on to the tip of Snape's nose. He panicked, wiped it away, expecting congealed blood. Venom. The flicker of a tongue at his neck.

Water. It had started to rain.

"Are you all right?" Moira asked. She took a step forward as Snape lurched back, the glass jars of passata in the carrier bags clanging back against the gate. "Do you need to sit down?" she said. "It's snakes, isn't it? People can be so frightened of them. But you  _did_  ask—"

"I'm fine," Snape said, taking a hold of the gate. He looked up to the house, expecting movement, but the curtains were drawn, the windows dark, nobody home. Breathed deep through his nose. Out through his mouth.

"Perhaps it's time to head back," she said. "Unless you want to continue."

Continuing was the last thing he wanted. They went back to the war memorial; his hands were still shaking as he handed over her shopping, and in exchange, Moira produced a plastic bucket from her handbag. Behind her, Hermione suddenly appeared from around the corner, stopped, smiled, and waved.

"For the museum," Moira said, shaking the bucket in her hand; it jangled with coins.

 _Anything?_ Hermione mouthed over Moira's shoulder.

Snape shuddered as more drops fell, then slid a twenty pound note into the waiting slot.

 

* * *

 

"Something happened again," Hermione said as she urged Snape into a booth by the pub fire, then shuffled in after him, turning to warm her legs by the flames. "You can't pretend nothing did. I rather think I've come to know you better than that. What were you doing, anyway?"

Snape had another hot chocolate, was taking it down in gulps. It wasn't helping.

He shuddered and her back pressed up against his side. He wondered if it was deliberate, or if she couldn't feel him there through the fabric of her coat. Finally, she turned so they were side-to-side, their close proximity undeniable, though she seemed inexplicably unconcerned by it.

"Where were you," Snape grunted. Not really a question, didn't really care.

"At the library," Hermione answered, of course. She kicked her heavy rucksack further beneath the table. "Found twelve books, altogether. Might need your help, if we want to find anything in time."

Snape wondered for a moment what she was counting down to, then realised she had most likely been running through the past days on an internal clock, the minutes ticking away until she'd have to go home to her parents, until she'd have to leave him to his own pitiful devices. She had unsettled him so greatly, thrown a spanner into the workings of his mind. He felt so babyish around her, so wholly impractical, that he didn't know how he'd be able to function when she stepped back on the train to London. It was stupid how little he wanted to think about it.

He didn't even  _like_ her.

"You  _did_  see something," Hermione said, instantly proving his point. "Or at least feel it."

"You don't have a library card," Snape replied, deflecting her accusation.

She blushed brilliantly and whispered, "I'll post them back when I'm done with them. They hadn't been checked out in years, anyway." She brushed his change of subject aside. "We're here to help each other," she said. "I've been honest with you. You need to be honest with me."

Snape took another sip of chocolate. It pooled across his burnt tongue.

"What happened?" she said. "When I found you, it looked as though you'd seen a ghost."

Snape brought his hand to his neck and rubbed. It was aching terribly, a strange, burning patch of skin spreading from his shoulder across his throat to the underside of his chin.

"It was a ghost tour," he said.

"I noticed," she said. "The librarian kept blabbing on about the hauntings. What, did she say something?"

"Not about ghosts," Snape admitted, pressing harder, the cold skin of his hand numbing the pain in his neck. "I'm…" he began. "…I have a phobia." His voice dropped. "Of snakes."

"Okay," Hermione said (thankfully not laughing).

"It was something she said," Snape continued, "that a few years ago, they found a huge snake in the attic of one of the houses here."

"Just found it?" Hermione said, plainly incredulous. "It must've been someone's pet."

"Undoubtedly," Snape said. "And then the deer yesterday. It felt like…I knew it would be there. Like it had something to do with me."

He looked up at Hermione, and he was thankful to see her expression wasn't humouring. Instead, her head was cocked to the side, her brows furrowed.

"Was the house down Church Lane?" she asked.

Snape shrugged.

"It's just that…it sounds familiar. Only, I don't think I marked it on the map."

"Coincidences," Snape said and grabbed hard onto the handle of his mug.

"I'm starting to think about that," Hermione said. "I've been convinced for the longest time that there are things I've forgotten. Well, I  _know_  there are things I've forgotten. But I don't think that's it, not wholly."

"I'm starting to think it's not us," Snape replied, knowing exactly what she meant. "It's everyone else."

"And that these coincidences," Hermione agreed, "are perhaps, theoretically, symptomatic of a wrong world trying to right itself. I know it sounds mad, but—"

"But  _is_  this the wrong world?" Snape asked. He looked up at their surroundings, at the empty pub and the empty bar, relishing the fact that they were alone.

"Doesn't it feel wrong to you?" Hermione asked. "We think there should be things there aren't, a freak snake shows up in someone's attic—" She shuddered. "—and that somehow seems like something we expect to happen—"

"Coincidences," Snape said with a sneer. "The spots on the map, the rare deer we just happened to spot in the forest…"

Hermione nodded, and began to dig through her bag before extracting her diary from beneath the library books. "So the snake means something," she replied. She licked her thumb and flipped open to a free page. "As does the deer."

She fixed him with her wide-eyed stare, her brown eyes watery, sympathetic, as if she was trying to goad him into starting to cry.

"Tell me, Severus," she said, in her best therapist imitation, "how does this make you feel?"

He squirmed. His trousers made rude noises against the vinyl of the booth. Her knee knocked into his thigh.

His neck throbbed.  _Afraid_.

He met her gaze and set his jaw.

"Empty," he said, his voice hard. "Like I'm missing something."

She sucked at her top lip and scribbled something down without looking at the page.

"Magic," she offered.

"Someone," he muttered.

Hermione flinched and whispered, "Whom?"

"I don't know," Snape said. "Who is Ron?"

She was going to start crying again. He tried not to feel too pleased that that comment shut her up, but couldn't help it.

He glanced at his watch. "Time to go," he said, gesturing toward the door. She wasn't looking at him, busying herself by re-packing her things into her bag. Snape slid out of the booth, refusing to help her, wondering why he suddenly felt angry with her. Again. "Bus will be here in five minutes," he said.

He'd lost his return ticket; Hermione had to buy him a new one. Still, she didn't say another word as he slid into the seat and she sat beside him, only allowed him to press his forehead to the bus window and watch the streets of Dark's Hollow retreat, the shops shuddering out of view as they turned off the high street, past the last few cottages on the outskirts of town.

One last cottage appeared: a stone ruin that appeared to smoke in the cold. Snape knocked his forehead into the window, leaving a mark, like he could slide through the glass and into the lawn. His pulse quickened, his throat tight with panic. He almost said something, almost pointed it out to Hermione, almost shouted to stop the bus so he could go: go see, go witness, go undo everything.

But a second later it had disappeared. One last rush of light from a pair of headlights and the ruin diminished into the deepening twilight, where it was only a house, windows glowing warm yellow, guttering twinkling with lights for Christmas, completely and spectacularly whole.


	11. Ron

**Chapter Eleven**

_**Ron** _

 

Snape had microwaved her mash perfectly. She suspected he may have become quite used to microwave meals, but when she voiced her suspicion, he only shook his head and told her, "Too expensive," before unloading a petit pain and a lump of cheese onto his duvet. He seemed in better spirits, now that they were back at the B&B. And by better spirits, Hermione meant that he had volunteered to heat her dinner, as well as spoken to her without looking as though he was about to snap her neck in two.

They'd pushed their beds together and laid out the picnic dinner between them, Hermione sitting cross-legged on her bed, Snape sitting at an awkward angle on his. He hadn't protested when she'd slid her mattress against his, though Hermione pretended not to notice the way his sallow skin flushed pink across his cheekbones.

"Well, Miss Granger," Snape said once he'd downed the last remnants of his foul mood with a bit of bread and butter and a full litre of water, "I think it's your turn."

"My turn for what?" She took a bit of his bread and scooped potato onto his plate in recompense.

"You say you've been honest with me," he said, "but unless I am mistaken, you've told me nothing over the past two days."

"That's because nothing's happened," Hermione replied, her ears growing hot.

"You say that—"

"You  _know_ that," Hermione replied, fighting down a smile. "You're trying to ask me about myself and you don't know how. I suppose small talk isn't your forte?"

"It's not something I'm very used to."

 _Sad,_ Hermione thought, hoping her pity didn't show on her face. She stuffed a bit of bread into her cheek and swallowed before saying, "What do you want to know?"

Snape beat the rim of his plate with the tines of his fork, thinking.

"What did you study at A-level?" he asked.

"Chemistry," Hermione replied immediately, "Biology, Maths, History, and English."

"Five?"

"I was ambitious," Hermione replied. "If it makes you feel better, I failed them all except for Maths. And in that one I got a 'C,' which might as well be failing."

"Why?" Snape said, looking honestly confounded.

Hermione shrugged and swept a finger around her plate, bringing up the last remnants of mash, still feeling ravenous.

"That's when it happened," she said. "I couldn't focus. History was a disaster. I got almost every detail I could've wrong, and babbled for near-half of my answers."

"Do you still have your exam?" Snape asked, eyebrows furrowed.

"No," Hermione replied. "They don't exactly give them back. Though knowing my luck it's stuck to the wall in the examiner's office or something as a comedy piece. Why?" She sucked her finger, bit her nail. "Do you think it might be useful?"

"Do you remember any of what you wrote?"

"Not an iota," Hermione said. "Only thing I do remember is looking down to find the pages filled with rubbish, and that they sent me to the school nurse because I was soaked with sweat and they thought I might pass out."

She shoved her plate aside and smothered a hiccough with the back of her hand. "Your turn."

"I think I've made enough of an arse of myself over the past few days," Snape replied.

"Not nearly," she said. She took a hold of her bare feet with her hands and leant forward. "Stupid for stupid. Tell me something ridiculous you've done. It's only fair."

Snape didn't smile. He didn't laugh, or groan, or refuse. He just looked at her, his dark eyes steady, glassy, almost wet.

Hermione gripped hard onto her toes, suddenly uncomfortable. Suddenly feeling a bit odd.  _Not handsome_ , she reminded herself.  _Also, grumpy arse_.

"Sleep walking," she suggested, attempting to allay the sudden awkwardness of this conversation. "Or anything else out of the ordinary. It's most likely  _very_  important that we make a note of such things."

Snape shuffled for a moment, and leant against the headboard, looking unwilling to open his mouth, until he finally said, "I jumped off the roof."

Hermione almost fell backward off the bed. Her face flaming, she rushed to say, "I didn't mean sui—"

"No," he said. His hand gripped the edge of the pillow, his knuckles white. "It was an accident."

"At your house?" Hermione breathed.

"Yes. There was no reason for me to be up there. I just thought I could…"

"Fly," Hermione said for him.

He nodded. Their eyes met again, and she suddenly felt a bit sick.

"Did you have a broomstick, by chance?" she asked, dropping her gaze to the duvet cover.

At least he didn't snort, but his reply was a most definite, "No."

"Hm," Hermione said. Her diary was in her rusksack on the other side of the room. She couldn't be bothered to get up and retrieve it. "What else?"

"I don't think so," Snape said. "Your turn."

"You've read my diary," she protested.

"The first few pages of your diary," he said (a bit quickly, actually. Was he blushing again?), then repeated, "Your turn."

She frowned and ran her thumb along the scar on her left arm.

"I bought my parents plane tickets to Australia for their anniversary."

Snape scoffed. "That's not embarrassing."

"They were one-way," she said, and finally, he laughed. It wasn't even mean. More mirthful, like he wasn't actually laughing  _at_  her, even though she suspected he was.

"What did they say?" he asked.

"They absolutely loved the gift," she said, allowing herself her own self-deprecating smile, "at least, until they realised two weeks before they were to leave that the tickets didn't include a return trip. They weren't  _exactly_  happy to pay twice again what I had spent in the first place, but I still managed to talk them into going." Her hands were going sweaty, remembering the e-mails that had flooded her inbox: her parents tanned and smiling in front of Sydney Harbour Bridge; a koala bear clinging to her terrified father's front; her mum, tanned and smiling, arms framing a termite mound in Queensland—both her parents looking the happiest they had in years, finally free of their daughter.

Her smile must have faltered, because she looked up to find Snape observing her with concern. Or perhaps jealousy? It was impossible to read him.

"What should we do tomorrow?" Hermione asked. "I was thinking about going back to the village—"

"I'm done here," Snape said. "As far as I'm concerned, we can move on."

"Yes, but—"

"Reading now," Snape cut her off, climbing to his feet. He took his bed frame in his hands and began to drag it backwards until the legs notched into the dents in the floor, then pulled it a further two inches toward the window. He slid his plate onto the bedside table and collapsed onto the protesting mattress, flipped open the book she had assigned to him, and said, face and voice completely impassive, "Then we can talk about what we go from here. And perhaps," he added, his tone dead, his eyes fixed on the blank inside cover of the book, "it is time for you to start thinking about going home. Your family must miss you."

Hermione chewed for a moment on nothing, not knowing how on earth to answer that, not wanting to admit out loud that she wasn't sure they did.

"Severus," she said, "what happened to your parents?"

Her only answer was a flipped page.

She scooted back in her bed, the covers bunching around her knees.

"We'll talk tomorrow," she said, her face burning, knowing she'd said something wrong.

"Tomorrow," was his only reply, and with that, they both buried themselves in their books.

 

* * *

 

She was in the forest again. It was night, and cold, as bitter as the day she and Snape had come upon the deer, but she was inside. In a bed, a creaky one, swaying on its leg like she was high up, close to the ceiling.

She lifted a hand. Her fingers hit canvas.

"Hermione?"

Her head did, too.

"Ron?" she said.

"Hey." She couldn't see him but she knew he was there. She could feel the indent on her mattress, his elbows digging into the springs. The lower bunk creaked as he shifted on his feet, sending up a puff of must and cat wee.

"What's going on?" Hermione asked.

"Were you asleep?"

"I still am." She stretched out a hand, her fingers trembling, then withdrew, afraid her bones would go straight through him. Was this real? She wasn't here. She was, but she wasn't. She was aware where she ought to have been, in that little B&B with Snape, Mrs Jones, and the landlady's yappy dog snoring on the floor below.

"Ron," Hermione said, testing the name again. Her head hurt, like a motor in her mind was trying and failing to turn over, all its gears grinding. "Who are you?"

Concern: "Are you all right?"

Her forehead was splitting.

"Here," Ron said. " _Incendio_."

A lantern at Hermione's bedside flared to life, but its light only travelled so far. Only the canvas wall, her bed, the posts. Everything beyond it was a morning-grey, faded-out, like it ceased to exist. She knew where she was, but she didn't know  _how_  she knew. As far as she could see, she was in her own little pocket, the light failing to reach anywhere and anyone outside of it.

Anyone except  _him_.

Hermione tried not to gasp but couldn't help it. The shining red hair, brilliant even in the lamplight. Freckles splashed across his cheeks and nose. He'd just pocketed something, and moved to fold his big hands in front of himself on the mattress, just an inch away from her covered knee.

"You left us," Hermione said.

His expression flickered—hardness, regret.

"Yeah, I know," he said uneasily. "We've gone over that."

"You left us."

"Hermione?"

Hermione lay back down, flat on her back, stared at the ceiling, only moving when she felt Ron crawl in beside her, propped on his side, still very carefully not laying a hand on her.

"You can do magic," she breathed.

She jumped—Ron's hand was on her forehead, feeling for a fever. "Are you feeling all right?" he asked.

No, she certainly wasn't. She was feeling sick, and dizzy, like the bed was going to spin out from under her, throw her off, send her flying.

She found the leg of his trousers and clutched tight to the fabric.

"We need a place to meet," she said. "If we're separated again."

"I'm not-"

"We need it, Ron," she insisted.

"Okay, okay," he whispered. His hand was around her ear now, so warm she wanted to cry. "The Burrow. We'll meet at the Burrow. Okay?"

"The Burrow in Devon," Hermione replied.

"Er, yes, the Burrow in Devon." The smoothing motion of his hand over her hair stopped. The bed wobbled violently, and she clutched harder. He didn't seem to notice. "Did you have a bad dream?" he asked. "I'm not leaving you again."

"That's the thing, Ron," she said. "Yes, you are."

The bed gave one final spin and he was gone, the tent was gone, the lantern light was gone. She was on the floor at the bed and breakfast, grey morning light easing through the windows, Snape standing over her in his loosened dressing gown, face unreadable.

"You were dreaming again," he said. "What did you see?"

"Him," she said. She stood, tripped, the blankets curling around her ankles, grabbing tight. "I need to go," she said.

"Go where?" he asked as she flung her purse, her notebook, and her phone into her bag.

"The Burrow. I'm going to find him, and I'm going to bring him back with me. Severus…" Her voice faltered; Snape had gone shimmery, a big black oil slick spread across her field of vision. "I'm going to find Ron."


	12. The Burrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you so much for the (to be honest) fairly amazing comments so far. I hope I can continue to live up to your expectations - the pressure is on! I've set up a Facebook page if you'd like to follow and be notified of updates somewhere other than e-mail. Do stop by if you wish; link is https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wonk/892286710792872
> 
> Thanks again, and enjoy. Chapter Thirteen is coming soon.

 

**Chapter Twelve**

_**The Burrow** _

 

The journey was agonizingly slow. Hermione had never liked to fly (always trying to cajole her parents into driving to France for their ski holidays), but it seemed absurd that to get from one point on the map to another mere inches away, it would take two trains, three buses, and several hours of Hermione's life that she would never get back. Single-handedly inventing teleportation would have been faster.

But it didn't matter. Not now that she had her bag and the weather was fine and she had four miles to walk before she arrived at where the Burrow was marked on her map. She'd gone dry-mouthed the last few miles on the bus—jittery and nervous. For the first time, she actually wished she had her medication at hand to take the edge off, to hem in her emotions. It hadn't even happened, the night before, her in that bunk bed, him next to her, his palm on her forehead. Her anger and sadness, her relief that he was  _there_. And yet she had felt the damp of his hand, heard the sound of his breathing, the way her name formed on his lips—not drawn out with proper enunciation, but clipped off at the edges, because he knew her well enough to realize she really didn't care whether he said it properly or not, as long as it was said with affection.

She had had a hard time not telling every single person where she was going and why. One of the bus drivers had looked her up and down (though not in a lecherous way; his brief glance only seemed to confirm that she was young, healthy, and not hauling a trolley walker for her weekly shop) and asked her, "What brings you this way?"

"Going to meet someone," she had said, not able to hold it in. "Ron."

"Boyfriend, then?" the bus driver had asked, and Hermione flattered herself to think he sounded disappointed.

"Yes," she said, wondering why that felt true, or even insufficient.

"Two-fifty," the driver replied and held out his palm for her change. He even wished her good luck as she disembarked, as though he knew that she'd need it.

There were sheep loose on the hills, broken out through the collapsing dry stone walls, scattered across the single track roads. She sent some of them scurrying when she turned corners or popped out from behind a tall hedge. Every bleat of surprise, every clatter of hooves, made her relax, the tension in her shoulders evaporate, like the animals were channeling her demons, conducting her panic, taking the edge off her worries that she was chasing after yet another false dream.

"Ron," she said out loud a few times, testing it, seeing how it sounded, how many different ways and with what degree of warmth she could say the name. His image was still vividly imprinted on her mind from the night before: brassy freckles, brilliant hair, an amalgam of nearly every boy she'd dated since she was eighteen, only so much more enticing. Even his name made her heart race a bit faster as she walked, more than she could attribute to her unfitness.

Ron was someone important, that much was certain. Someone who inspired her to rage and weep and lament his absence. Now that she was awake, the emotion of her dream having faded, the impression of him still remained as vivid as his image; the thought of him infatuated her, like a particularly well-drawn character in a book, his words saying little but the fact that he was there revealing so much more of his true intentions.

And just like a character in a book, it was very possible he wasn't real.

No, Hermione thought, heart-sick, desperate. He _had_  to be real. She didn't know what she would do if he wasn't. If none of this was.

It had taken six years to remember his name. She wasn't going to dismiss him now.

The morning carried on into early afternoon, and Hermione grew calmer the closer she came to the star on her map. Her heart felt like it had nearly slowed to a stop when the orchard appeared, with its bare apple trees evenly spaced behind stone walls. Strange images flashed in her mind: her, stretching out beneath green branches, reading, passing childhood days with blank-faced friends who made her laugh. Ignored invitations to play sport, throw a ball about; hunting garden pests with Crookshanks at her behest; friends' parents waving her off on adventures—ridiculous little  _mise-en-sc_ _ènes_ that wouldn't have been out of place in an Enid Blyton, far too happy to be real.

"Ron," she said again, tasting the syllable, as she stepped through the garden gate of the Burrow.

 

* * *

 

"Oh, good, you're back!"

It was Mrs Jones, her dog closely at heel, sliding her glasses up her nose as she flew with surprising speed into the front hall.

"Do you know if Her…my friend is back yet?" Snape asked, trying hard not to fall over as he pried off his shoes.

"No, she's not," Mrs Jones replied. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a card, handed it over to Snape between her thumb and forefinger. "Someone came by and left this for you."

Snape took the card and looked down at it with a crooked brow. "This is your business card," he said.

She waved her hand. "On the back."

He turned it over. "A phone number," he said dryly.

"Nice boy," she said. "Very handsome, about the same age as your friend. Black. Am I allowed to say that, these days? Black?"

Snape didn't answer her question. "What did he want?"

"Only to speak to you."

"Was he selling something?"

"Not that I could see," Mrs Jones said with a shrug. She paused, then sniffed the air, like a dog tracking the hunt. "Have you been drinking?"

"I've been out," Snape said, hoping he wasn't slurring his words. The bar staff at the pub in Dark's Hollow had been friendlier today, and much more liberal with the ale. The barmaid had even woken him up when he'd somehow fallen asleep slumped against the wall of the shelter and nearly missed the last bus back.

It had not been a productive day.

"Did you have a nice time?" Mrs Jones asked.

"Did he give a name?" Snape asked, clutching the card tight in his hand.

"You know, I don't remember," she said with a close-lipped, squinting smile. The dog whinged at her side. "You don't want to live to my age," Mrs Jones advised Snape, shushing her dog with a wave of her hand, "I'm just a living tin opener, now."

She disappeared into the kitchen, the dog shoving in ahead of her, his nails skittering on the floor.

Snape looked at the card, at the dents his fingers had left in the paper. Then he picked up the hall phone and began to dial.

 

* * *

 

"Did you find him?"

It was the same bus driver, taking her ticket and punching it with the same rhythmic disinterest.

"Yes," Hermione said.

"Weren't gone long," he remarked.

Hermione went to sit in the back of the bus, right in Snape's favourite spot. She could barely feel the seat against her back. She had walked eight miles, and yet her feet weren't sore and her legs didn't ache. After the driver shut the doors and drove on, she pressed her head against the sweating glass, just like Snape had, and listened only to the dry sound of her breathing.

She wasn't quite sure what she had been expecting. The name 'the Burrow' suggested so much—a hobbit house, maybe, with its round green door opening into a low-ceilinged bungalow, or (oddly, she thought) something like the old breweries her parents used to take her to on countryside getaways: the cobbled together old houses that had been built in pieces, up and out to accommodate a growing need for space.

The same part of her expected that on this bus (if she even made it back on the bus, didn't move into the Burrow, live there forevermore among people who  _knew_ her, understood her, wanted to be with her), she would have Ron next to her right now, speaking to her, reminding her of everything she had lost and helping her remember. That she could sit him down in her and Snape's room and have him tell them everything. That the weight would be lifted, this world would fade away, and what would remain would be everything pure, right, and good.

But.

But…Ron wasn't there.

Ron wasn't anywhere.

There was no Burrow, higgledy-piggledy or otherwise. Nothing beyond that gate but a cow barn, an old stone pigpen used as storage, and a new-build, Stoat House, home to two unfriendly farmhands who knew just enough English to tell her that one: there was no Ron there, had never been any Ron there, and two: to get the fuck off of their land.

She knew she was imagining it but it was even like the bloody bus driver had expected her to show up with a blow-up boyfriend under her arm.

 _God_ , Hermione thought miserably as she floated from bus to bus, bus to train. The thought was looping through her mind, stuck:  _What is Snape going to say_?

Going to foist her off on professionals, just like her parents.

Disown her.

Call her mad, and mean it.

She kicked over a public bin in Bristol - or tried; it was bolted to the ground - and spent the remainder of the journey home with a throbbing foot, but she didn't care. Someone could have run it over and she'd have barely noticed.

It was dark by the time she arrived back at the bed and breakfast. No one came into the hall when she opened the front door, her keys overly loud, making her head throb. Only the front lamp was on, the rest of the house gone dark.

She left her shoes by the door, walked up the steps with her foot at an angle to keep the blood that had soaked through her sock ( _broken nail)_  from staining the carpet. There was a light on under the bedroom door.

She swallowed, though she didn't have any spit left in her mouth. Her fingers reached for the knob.

Snape got there before she did.

"I thought I heard you on the stairs," he said, flinging the door open. His eyes didn't even search her side, didn't pry for answers; he didn't even wait for her to speak.

"There's someone here to see you," he said.

Snape moved aside, waved her in.

She didn't move. In the absence of Snape, the room came into view: the books she'd stolen from the library were scattered across the carpet, some flipped open to random pages, others on their spines, up against the furniture like they'd been kicked to the side.

And by the window stood a young man, vaguely illuminated by the dim light of Snape's bedside lamp.

"Hermione," the man said with a solemn nod.

"Oh no," Hermione gasped, and she ran out of the room before Dean Thomas could say a word to stop her.


	13. That Way Madness Lies

**Chapter Thirteen**

_**That Way Madness Lies** _

 

Dean's first ever word to her had been sent anonymously two weeks before her twenty-second birthday. Hermione hadn't noticed the private message waiting for her until a week after it had already arrived, when she was holed up in her bedroom, her father singing loudly as he baked her requested birthday cake (double chocolate, chocolate swirls) downstairs. She didn't even know that the website had  _had_  a private messaging feature, actually, considering it looked like someone had cobbled together half-remembered lines of code from a mid-nineties course in web design. Finally, she noticed that there was more blinking yellow text among the other blinking text, telling her that someone on her Myth and Magic of the British Isles forum had finally deemed her sane enough to talk to.

 _Hi_.

That was all it said. She recognised the username, WestHamFan—it was someone she's squabbled with in a few threads, disagreeing about fundamental canon of Arthurian legend. He was a bit of an idiot, Hermione thought, and all he knew about British myths he'd seemed to glean from big budget Hollywood films—but even with the anonymity of her online presence, she couldn't bring herself to put such cruelty down in writing.

 _Hello? s_ he wrote back instead, bemused.

Two days later she received another reply:  _Hi, just thought you might want to chat. My name is Dean. :)_

 _Emoticons,_  Hermione thought.  _Of course._

It took her another week to think of what to say. It went on for three months like this: conversation in vapid segments, growing friendlier and more familiar piece by piece (he had three sisters, he left school the same year she did, he lived only two miles away), until finally Dean asked,  _Do you think we should meet?_

It was another two weeks until she replied with a hesitant, lowercase,  _yes_.

They did meet, at the cafe in Hermione's local Sainsbury's during the Granger household's Saturday shop. She abandoned her mother in the cheese aisle with promises of examining the special offer on sugar-free sweets and felt oddly exhilarated as she settled herself into a plastic table in the cafe, crossed her legs, and tucked her hands between her knees to wait. Her fingertips were cold, her palms sweaty, and her nerves were sending rapid impulses to her brain, telling her to panic. _What if he_ _'s a perv?_ she couldn't help but think.  _A murderer? What if he_ _'s—_

"Hermione?"

She started—she had completely blanked him, noticing a beat late that he was standing on the other side of the table, waving at her.

"Dean," she said at last, glad his name was only one syllable—the crack of her voice would surely have cut off any remaining letters. She stood, smiled, and held out her hand to shake his, wondering whether or not she ought to have given him a hug and deciding firmly against it.

His handshake was confident, his face friendly. He had been surprisingly accurate in his description of himself, but even standing across from her, he still looked, in her head, a tad like a walking, breathing winky face.

Their conversation began in awkward bursts, just as their online exchanges had. She'd known it was going to be odd, meeting someone from the internet for the first time, but he was…well, similarly odd. Very polite, which was not at all what she had expected from their public forum posts. A bit stilted, like he was holding something back.

"So," he finally said at last, once Hermione's tea was gone and she could spy her mother looking somewhat frazzled as she started to unload their trolley at a distant checkout. Dean laughed a small, embarrassed laugh, reclaiming Hermione's attention. "You seem really into this stuff, huh?"

"Into what?" Hermione replied blankly.

"The whole mythical history thing."

She gave him a surprised sideways glance. "Erm, well, you  _are_ _—_ _"_

"I know," he said, laughing again. "It's just that, I'm not really the kind of person who does this."

"Meets people from the internet?" Hermione suggested.

"Posts on forums," he replied. "I can't really explain why I'm interested in it. I just am."

"Me too," Hermione agreed, a small, strange warmth spreading through her chest.

A minute later she had to wish him a hurried goodbye. A part of her was relieved to finally be leaving, another smaller, odder part of her hesitant to go, if only because it felt like there was something he had forgotten to tell her.

She acquiesced, confused, when he asked for her phone number. He looked just as perplexed to receive it.

Two weeks later, Dean had become a regular guest at the Granger residence. Hermione's parents liked him, but only because they never found out how the two had met. Mr Granger would prod at his daughter, gently suggest the two go out to the cinema, to dinner, instead of sitting upstairs in Hermione's room with the door pointedly open to prove that nothing was going on between them, and that they were, indeed, only friends. And as much as Hermione assured her parents that there was no mutual attraction (for there wasn't, despite, deep down, Hermione thinking to herself that he  _was_  quite good-looking), and that they each found the other a little too odd for any romantic interest, her mother's only response was was a "pft" and a smiling, "Of course there isn't—he's not ginger."

As much time as they spent together, the time they spent talking was relatively small. They had little in common outside their shared interest. He bled football (it seemed 80% of his wardrobe was West Ham burgundy) and he didn't like cats, despite Hermione's insistence that Crookshanks wasn't  _just_  a cat and Dean's very polite agreement that if he did like cats, he was sure Crookshanks would have been his favourite.

He was reminding her of this fact for the third time, two months after they'd first met in person, when Hermione finally asked, "Dean, why are you always here?"

"Do you want me to leave?" he asked, startled.

"No," she rushed to say. "I mean…I'm not your girlfriend. We don't really do anything together of note. I just don't understand."

"You could say no when I ask to come over."

"I know, it's only—"

"Hermione," he said, suddenly serious. He was sitting cross-legged on her bed, still wearing his trainers. "You know why I'm here."

"Because it feels right," Hermione said, her voice small.

"Yeah. Not because I fancy you," Dean said. "No offense. It's nothing—"

"No, I know," Hermione said, blushing. "I don't fancy you, either."

"Good," Dean said. "So you know what I'm talking about."

Hermione wrung the hem of her T-shirt in her hands, and hated to admit to him, "Yes, I think I do."

With that stated, future conversation bloomed from nowhere. They began to read together, exchange notes. It was Dean who had been brave enough to say the conjecture out loud, the ridiculous statement that Hermione had since taken to wearing around like a secret club badge ever since:  _Magic is real. We just can_ _'t see it._  She had been so cruel to laugh at him at first, but only one night's restless sleep later, she had to come to the same conclusion: Dean was absolutely right.

Which, in the end, made the betrayal so much more painful.

And yet now here he was, years later. In her room, in the Forest of Dean. With Snape.

Snape, who might as well have been wearing a sign reading  _I_ _'m your replacement_ around his neck, for the way Dean had looked between them in the brief seconds before she ran _._

She wouldn't have fled in normal circumstances, but it was not a normal day. Oh god, she had been hoping to do so many things when she got back - sleeping, eating, crying herself to sleep, maybe even begging a hug off Snape if he felt so inclined (unlikely) - but none of those things had involved Dean showing up in her room, just to remind her that her mind was well and truly gone.  _Hello,_  his presence seemed to say.  _Just here to remind you that you_ _'re mental and your imaginary boyfriend doesn't actually exist, and I'm worried about your safety as you are_ obviously _delusional. I_ _'ve called your parents; they'll be here in an hour. Enjoy hospital. Again_."

Hermione clenched her fists hard.  _Bloody, traitorous Dean_.

Snape found her on the bench in the back garden. She wasn't sure she was meant to be out there (she had a perfect, lit-up view of Mrs Jones splayed out on her sitting room sofa, illuminated by the television but the space beneath her gaping dressing gown mercifully dark).

"I'm not certain you're meant to be out here," Snape said, nearly invisible but for the cloud of his breath that lit up in the blue light of Mrs Jones's television. He caught a glance of the old woman, did a double take, and determinedly looked away. "You're  _definitely_  not meant to be out here," he said.

"You could've asked me before you invited  _him_  in."

"No, I couldn't have, because you won't turn on your mobile. And if you'd be so kind to return with me, you might better explain—"

"There's nothing  _to_ explain,  _Professor_ ," Hermione spat. He took a step back, and Hermione felt instant guilt for acting so short with him (but not enough to apologise). "What has he told you? How did he find us?"

"So you do know him," Snape replied. He sounded relieved.

"What has he told you?"

"That you two are friends."

" _Were_  friends."

"Are friends," Snape repeated. "That you stopped talking to him after you went—"

They both stopped—Mrs Jones had moved. She was standing at the sliding glass door and staring directly at them. They both held their breathes, as if she would be able to hear the sound of their breathing. As if they'd get in trouble if they were caught. Then she blinked, leant back, scratched her thigh, and turned to go into the other room.

They both gave a sigh of relief as she disappeared into the corridor.

"He said," Snape continued with a whisper, "that you stopped talking to him after you went to hospital."

"Did he tell you  _why_  I was in hospital?" Hermione hissed back.

"He said…" Snape paused. The distant corridor lamp went off inside the house, leaving every bit of it in darkness but for their single bedroom window, glowing yellow in the night. "You were going to hurt yourself."

"That's what he told my parents."

"And you didn't?"

Hermione didn't answer.

"You're cold," Snape said. "Let's go inside." Was he holding out a hand? It was too dark. Hermione couldn't tell, and she refused to take it if he was.

"Not with him."

"One foul move and he'll be on his way," Snape promised.

She didn't move, and Snape was so still and silent it was as though he'd vanished completely from the lawn.

"I'm tired," Hermione said.

"Then he'll be soon on his way regardless."

Hermione bristled to find Dean sitting on the end of her bed when they returned. He looked up at her, his chin resting in his folded hands, and edged sideways to collapse into the armchair against the wall.

Hermione didn't sit.

"Are you following me?" she asked.

"No," Dean said.

"Then how did you find me?"

Dean didn't answer. Hermione felt long fingers curl over her shoulder and she stood stock-still, humming with the thrill of Snape's rare show of solidarity…if that was indeed what he was doing, and he wasn't just holding her back.

"Dean," Hermione said, "why are you here?"

"I didn't follow you," he said.

He still didn't expand. Hermione sucked on her front teeth and waited, watching him shuffle his feet on the carpet, shift his weight, refuse to look up at her from the worn patterning of the armchair.

"I saw you at the train station," he said at last.

"And got on the train with us."

"No. I was behind you in the queue. I heard you buy your tickets." He raked his fingers through his short black hair. "I've been ringing every open bed and breakfast in the past few days, trying to find you."

"I'm sorry that I've made it so difficult for you," Hermione snapped.

"Your parents are looking for you," Dean said, ignoring her anger. He dove to his feet and brought up his rucksack, then pulled from the front pocket a copy of the  _Daily Star_. He held it up, stretching it out between his fingers, pulling the page tight.

Hermione's own face smiled back at her from below the centre fold.

"The police are looking for you," Dean said.

Snape's fingers tightened on her shoulder.

"I've texted my mum," Hermione said, trying to keep her voice from quavering.

"When did you stop?" Dean said. "She said she hadn't heard from you in two days, and that was a while ago."

"Have you come to take me home, then?"

He began to fold the paper away, Hermione's face creasing width-wise as he stuffed it back into his rucksack. He made himself busy with the zipper, and Hermione prompted him, "Dean?"

Snape had at last let go of her shoulder; he was picking up the books that had been scattered across the floor.

"I've figured it out," Dean said. "What's separating us from them. Or it. Or whatever. Why we can't be what we're supposed to be."

"What are we supposed to be?" Hermione said, her face flushing, suddenly nervous.

Dean's eyes looked unfocused, his breathing a bit rapid, his face almost the same shade as his West Ham wine-coloured hoodie.

"Dead," he said.

Hermione glanced at Snape, but he was still busying himself with the books, apparently deaf-mute.

"Dead?" Hermione said, the word thin and high.

"I mean, it's not like it sounds," Dean continued. "We're in the  _wrong place_ , Hermione. It's not us who's wrong, it's the world that's wrong. And if we want to fix it, we need to die."

"Has he told you any of this?" Hermione asked Snape; he only gave her a furtive glance.

 _This is why he didn_ _'t make Dean leave_ , Hermione thought.

"Dean," Hermione said, "does your family know you're here?"

"Are you even listening to me?" he said.

"Sorry, right," Hermione said, her voice slow and careful. "Okay, do you remember what you said after you—"  _Ratted me out_. "—told my parents what we'd been doing? You said you told them because you didn't want me to hurt myself again."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Dean asked.

"I—"

"Don't you understand?" Dean interrupted. His fists clenched on his knees, the colour still rising in his cheeks.

Hermione was  _trying_  to understand, but truly not sure that she wanted to.

"Dead," she rushed to say, finally giving up her anger and collapsing at his side on the bed. She took a hold of the arm of his chair, as though that might keep his mind from its continued splintering, keep him all in one piece. "Do you mean you think we've been promised some sort of afterlife?"

"I don't know!" Dean said, his voice hoarse. "Yes!"

"So that if want to understand, we'll have to die."

"Hermione—" Snape warned.

"I told you I don't know," Dean said.

Hermione's hand found his fingers on his knee and squeezed. "Did someone tell you this?"

"No," Dean said. "I figured it out myself."

"How?"

"I've been doing a lot of thinking," he said. He was clenching his fists so tight that Hermione had to withdraw her hand at the risk of breaking her fingers. "And reading. Other…things. It's just…it's obvious, isn't it?"

Hermione blinked at him. "No, it isn't."

"But…." Dean ran his fingers through his hair again, frustrated. "It just makes so much sense. We're stuck in this bloody muggle world and—"

"What did you say?" Snape said.

"What?" Dean replied.

"This 'what' world?" Snape urged him.

"Muggle," Dean replied. "What?" he asked, finally noticing the concerned expressions on both of their faces. "What's wrong?"

"What does that mean, 'muggle?'" Hermione asked.

"I don't know, I just…" Dean blinked down at her hand on his knee and cringed away from her touch. "What are you doing?"

Hermione withdrew guiltily. "I'm worried—"

"No. You're trying to make me doubt myself. Come on, you of all people—"

"What else, Dean?" Hermione asked, edging forward on her bed. "What else have you been thinking?"

He finally met her gaze. His eyes were bloodshot, circles etching dark bruises into his skin. He slumped back into the chair and released a drawn-out sigh.

"I'm tired," he muttered.

"Perhaps—" Hermione began.

"Of this," he continued. "Of no one understanding me. Of trying to live here. It's not working, Hermione." He choked on what sounded like a muffled sob. "I can't do it."

Hermione and Snape exchanged worried glances.

"Stay the night here," Hermione told Dean, and she saw Snape give a tentative nod from the corner of her eye. "It's getting late. We can talk in the morning."

They had to coax him into Snape's bed. He wouldn't take off his clothes, but Hermione managed to help him out of his hoodie and encourage him to burrow down into the duvet in his long sleeved T-shirt and jeans. When he finally shut his eyes and his breathing steadied, Hermione and Snape retreated into the corridor and softly shut their door behind him.

"Do you have his home phone number?" Snape whispered.

"On my mobile," Hermione said. She sighed. "Do you want to call his mum or shall I?"

She couldn't see his expression in the dark, but his silence spoke volumes.

"Right," Hermione said, bracing herself on the stair banister and clutching tight. "Wish me luck."

* * *

Dean's sister collected him at three o'clock in the morning. Hermione and Snape met her in the drive, exhausted and bedraggled, having spent the past several hours taking turns sleeping in Hermione's single bed and pointedly not saying a word to each other—mostly to keep from waking up Dean, but also partly because there was absolutely nothing they wanted to admit to. Some conversations, they both thought, would be much kinder had in daylight.

"I'm so sorry," was the first thing Anita Thomas said as she slammed shut her car door with her hip. "That bloody idiot. He's been gone for days. Mum's been so worried about him."

"Thank you for collecting him," Hermione whispered. An erratic heartbeat pulsed through her; she'd spent all night trying to sleep but not able to shut off her brain, paranoid that she'd hear the creaks of Dean's steps on the floorboards, maybe the sash sliding up, maybe the groan of his weight on the windowsill….

"I should know better," Anita said, her hands hanging limp at her sides. "I'm a mental health nurse, you know. In training still, but…" She shook her car keys, looked determinedly up at the moonless sky (the whites of her eyes shone fluorescent in the motion sensor light), then gave Hermione a determined smile. "Where is the blighter, then?"

"He's asleep," Hermione said. "I…I'm not sure he'll be too happy to see you."

Anita's smile fell. "He  _is_  doing it again, then."

"Again? I—"

"We're worried," Snape cut in smoothly, "that your brother is exhibiting some…suicidal…urges."

Anita looked between them for a moment; the light flickered off and back on as Hermione shifted on her feet.

"Oh, not again," Anita sighed.

Hermione looked worriedly at Snape.

"This has happened before?" Hermione said.

"Five months ago," Anita said. "We thought he was getting better. Damn."

"He didn't say," Hermione said.

"No, he wouldn't." Anita swept her hand toward the dark house. "Right then," she said, and Hermione shuddered, thinking for the first time that this woman was younger than her, and yet she sounded so…tired. Was this how her parents sounded to other people—did they have that same exhausted dejection when anyone dared to ask about their poor mad daughter?

Anita pressed the button on her key and her car's lights flashed. "Lead the way," she said. "And let's thank God for child locks as we go."

* * *

They missed breakfast, but they still hadn't slept. Hermione and Snape started packing when the alarm went off, moving about their room entombed in their own minds. Snape had carefully straightened his sheets so not even Dean's depression in the mattress remained, but by the way Hermione felt as though she still had to tiptoe across the floorboards, he might as well have never left.

It was only as they were separating the keys from their key rings that Hermione finally said, "I didn't find him."

Snape was sitting by the window, trying without success to pry apart his split ring. He didn't say a word.

"Ron," Hermione clarified, as though it needed to be said. "He wasn't there. He doesn't exist."

"Was anything there, then?" Snape asked, completely detached, as though he were reading the question aloud.

"A farmhouse," Hermione replied. "Stoat House. And a few angry Eastern Europeans."

Snape made a disinterested noise and Hermione sunk onto the edge of his bed.

"That's it, then," she said. "That's what we'll turn into, if we keep going."  _Poor Dean._

"I fear," Snape replied, his tongue edging out beneath his lips as he focused intently on his keys, "that you may be right."

"My parents are looking for me," Hermione continued.

"Top marks, Miss Granger," Snape replied.

"I should go home."

"You should."

Hermione wrung her hands, watching the folds form at the edges of her palms.

"I feel like you should be trying harder to convince me," she said.

Snape gave a little triumphant "ha!" and set his free key down on the bedside table.

"As it is," Hermione continued, "I feel like you're trying to make this completely my decision."

"I definitely should be trying to convince you more," Snape admitted.

"Then why aren't you?"

"What did you say the name of the house was?" Snape asked. "The place that wasn't the Burrow."

"Stoat House," Hermione said, fighting down the sudden, unexpected urge to cry.

"In Dark's Hollow…" Snape said. He stood, bent past Hermione and retrieved a book from his bed, then settled back into his chair. "…the house with the snake in the attic. It was called Bagshot House."

"So?" Hermione asked, not at all in the mood for games, especially since, for once, she wasn't the one leading them.

Snape held up the library book,  _Magic, a Mythical History,_ his thumb underlining the author's surname on the spine.

"Bagshot," Hermione said, squinting.

"Bathtilda," Snape replied. "Apparently, she used to live there."

"Coincidence," Hermione said.

"As much as I hate to admit to it," Snape replied, "we seem to be coming upon an astonishing number of coincidences."

Hermione grabbed his pillow and hugged it hard.

"Hermione," Snape said, his voice edging and soft, as though he was trying to tiptoe into her brain, wrap up her doubt, carry it away. All the while she tried not to blink; every time she closed her eyes, she kept seeing Dean's staring back at her, bloodshot.

"What," Snape asked, running the split ring between his fingers, "is another name for a stoat?"

"A stoat?" Hermione said. The polyester stuffing constricted between her arms. "A weasel, I suppose."

Snape was silent, letting that word hang.

"Weasley," Hermione breathed, the pillow going limp in her arms. "Ron Weasley."

"Do you still want to go home?" Snape asked.

Hermione was silent, suddenly blinking back tears.

Snape slid the road atlas from the table and flicked it open in his lap. Through watery eyes, Hermione thought she could see him smiling.

"Now tell me, Miss Granger," Snape said as the pages ruffled open between his fingers, "where are we off to next?"


	14. The Manor

**Chapter Fourteen**

_The Manor_

 

Only half of a Hermione sat on the train with him to Wiltshire. Severus Snape was fully aware that he'd left part of her behind in that bed and breakfast: her pity, her feeling, and all her thoughts on Dean. It wasn't just part of her mind that was missing, either; she'd felt obvious unease at the photo of her that had appeared in the  _Daily Star_ (maybe felt particularly cross at the fact that it showed her smiling widely, her large front teeth on prominent display) along with her parents' pleas to come home. Now she was wearing Snape's woollen hat, her plait tucked into the brim, and a pair of glasses that Snape didn't even know she owned. With her most prominent and most admirable features hidden away (what her face didn't fill in the photograph, her hair certainly did, and it was hard to gauge the expression of her bright eyes behind the heavy frames), surely no one would recognise her as they left the Forest of Dean and headed east.

They especially wouldn't recognise the remaining half of her (the Hermione that could be coaxed into speaking, engaging, perhaps even a bit of walking if reminded) if she remained buried in Bathtilda Bagshot's book.

Snape asked her every so often if she'd come across anything of note, but she only shook her head, and had to be asked twice to show her train ticket when the inspector came past. She seemed to take no notice that the same much-hated photo of her had popped up on the front page of the  _Daily Mail_  and the  _Telegraph_ , a copy of either often splayed wide open by the odd passenger that sat across from them on their journey. Snape didn't draw her attention to it and instead stared intently through the grimy train window, rather glad that his name was yet to make an appearance alongside hers.

He was not ready for that conversation.

"I should've rung ahead," Hermione said when they'd disembarked, pressing her finger to one of the two bed and breakfasts marked on the map at the train station. "They might be booked up."

"Honestly, at this point, I'm beyond caring," Snape replied, feeling as though the pavement was about to pitch out from beneath him.  _Why_   _hadn_ _'t he slept on the train?_  Then Hermione pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and patted away a stray curl and he remembered. "Even a street corner is sounding rather comfortable," he added.

She wrinkled her nose. "We should find something."

They didn't. Christmas holidays had filled both places already — the first bed and breakfast sent them to the second bed and breakfast, and the second referred them to the first. Only after Hermione's desperate, bleary-eyed plea for, "Anything, even a stable," the proprietor stuck her thumb in her mouth and said, "Oh, I forgot. There's a roadside hotel just opened on the big roundabout."

Finally, blessedly, after Snape and Hermione stumbled across town because Snape refused to pay for a taxi, they had a room. It had only a double bed ( "It'll divide into singles," the man at the desk had said, though he hadn't offered to do it for them) but they were beyond caring. They both collapsed onto their respective sides and fell promptly asleep.

Hermione didn't wake until bright sun had broken out from behind persistent cloud outside their window, the sudden burst of light sending her head further into her pillow, resulting in the arm of her glasses attempting an escape into her inner ear.

"Mmph."She eased herself up, bleary and confused, having no idea where she was until she heard Snape's deep sigh from the other side of the bed. He had pressed himself against the very edge of the mattress, his back to her, his thin form a jagged range of clothes and bone on top of the sheets and blankets.

Hermione flung off her glasses and squinted at the bedside clock: 12:04.

"Severus?" Hermione murmured, feeling oddly shy as she bent to pull up her socks and slide her shoes back on. "We need to go. It closes at 3:30."

Snape grumbled, squirmed slightly, and went silent.

"Snape?"

Outside, the sun shifted once more behind cloud, the sky going darker than it had been before. Only midday and it seemed to already be growing dark. They had a perfect panoramic view of the roundabout and surrounds: there was a mist crawling across the A-road, the headlights of passing cars barely managing to pierce the fog.

"I'm cold," Snape mumbled, clutching his sides. He curled further into himself, his knees leaving the mattress and almost levering him off the bed.

"Thats because you're on top of the blankets," Hermione said. "Can we go? Please?"

"Fine," Snape sighed, then added (Hermione wasn't certain if he was joking), "but you're paying."

"I would expect nothing less," Hermione assured him, and tucked her plait back into her borrowed hat.

 

* * *

 

"Some of my parents' friends have houses like this," Hermione told Snape as she unfolded the house brochure and ran her finger along the floorplan. "Colleagues and old university mates. A bit smaller, mind, but…good lord, it is cold, isn't it?"

Snape had barely said a word since Hermione bought their tickets, only giving a grunt of protest as Hermione pressed the National Trust sticker to his breast pocket. He had refused a brochure and seemed intent on touring the grounds and interior of Faithless House with his hands stuffed in his pocket and a permanent glower on his face.

Hermione was trying to be chipper, but was quick on the path to a dour mood. Her concentration was lagging from lack of sleep; the fact that it had only been hours before that she'd shut her former friend into the back seat of his sister's car was surely not helping. And Snape, whilst he had been a relative bright point of positivity that morning, had grown quieter and clearly more apprehensive (his hands were busy tearing his bus ticket into shreds — Hermione would have to buy him another, again) every mile closer they came to the manor house marked on their map.

Now, when they left the kiosk and rounded a tall hedge so the house came into full view, Snape stopped in his tracks, letting Hermione walk a few paces on before she realised that she had left him behind.

"Severus?" she said.

Snape wasn't moving, his hands still stuffed in his pockets, his dark eyes fixed on the facade of the house.

Hermione approached Snape; his eyes didn't once flicker to her face or acknowledge that he realised she was there at all. She was the only one who jumped as a white peacock came to a clumsy landing a few feet from where they were standing and disappeared beneath the hedge.

"What is it?" Hermione asked. "Have you been here before?"

Snape stared hard, blinked, then furrowed his brows. Finally, he met Hermione's eyes and said, "I don't know."

"You would think you would remember…." She said, casting a sidelong glance over her shoulder. She knew manor houses were ten-a-penny (oh, how she wished that phrase were literal) in this part of the country, but this house was definitely odd. Not in the feeling she had about it — she was fairly indifferent, at least as much as one could be to such a soaring country house — but the architecture was strange, the windows numerous and diamond-shaped, the gables narrow and pointed, like fangs. The sun had made what felt like a permanent departure now, casting everything in a solid slate grey, and Hermione was trying hard to keep her teeth from chattering.

"You?" Snape asked, his eyes once again fixed on the manor house.

"I don't think so," she said. She took a step backwards. "Let's go. The tour starts in ten minutes." Her fingers found his sleeve cuff again, and she pulled. "Please," she added, as though she would ever give him the option of saying no.

 

* * *

 

He must have been contagious. Surely that was the only reason that the tour group he and Hermione had been assigned to was both so sour-faced and silent. Even the tour leader, a man with a red, egg-shaped face that looked naturally predisposed to cheer, was short with them, storming through room after room with the briefest of histories and refusing to take questions.

The third time Hermione raised her hand, Snape gave her a sidelong glance, and when the tour guide ignored her, she dropped it with a sigh.

"Something odd is happening," Snape whispered once they'd dropped back from the group. They were walking oddly-spaced down a narrow corridor, their steps setting the old floor to creaking at an alarming volume.

"I'm cold," Hermione complained again, pulling her collar close around her neck. Her hands were red, a few of her knuckles cracked.

"I think I've been here before," Snape said.

"You do remember?" Hermione whispered. "When?"

"I don't know," Snape admitted. "It just seems…familiar."

Hermione was quiet for a moment, considering. "I think," she said, "I might know what you mean."

Snape followed the group into the drawing room, and it took three minutes of trying to absorb the rapid stream of deadpan facts that the tour guide was firing off before he noticed that Hermione was no longer with him. They were alone in the drawing room, Snape and his five other tour mates, the leader standing dourly beneath a gaudy crystal chandelier. There were no electric lights, their seven faces only visible by the candlelight flickering in the sconces on the walls and reflected in the crystal, the windows, the mirror above the mantle.

"Hermione?" Snape whispered into the dark behind him. A puff of mist bloomed from his mouth, dragon's breath hanging in the cold. Another second, his heart beating faster, his palms sweating, yet cold, his fingertips ice. "Hermione?" he called again, louder this time.

He expected an immediate reprimand from the tour guide, but the entire group had gone silent. They were standing, grouped around him, shivering and watching their breaths float out, disappear into the dark.

"I-" the tour guide began again. He stopped, then let out a noise that sounded disturbingly like a strangled sob.

_I had a friend_ , Hermione had told Snape what felt like years ago, on the train to the Forest of Dean.  _In hospital. She tried to kill herself. Not old at all_ _…maybe younger than me. I asked her to explain it to me, what it was like to be so depressed one felt they had to resort to those measures. And I asked her if there was any truth to the old cliches: the black cloud, the black dog, the black et cetera_. Hermione had smiled and pressed back a page in her notebook, the one with the great black blob, billowing and ghost-like, scribbled into the paper so aggressively you could no longer see the lines. Snape had had to block the view of it with a carefully placed elbow on the train table.  _She said_ , Hermione had continued,  _that it_ _'s not an animal. It's an entity. Like a person, a bully. Someone who comes along and takes a hold of you so tight that you can't breathe. And you're starting to panic because you can't breathe, you just want out, any way out. And while it has its grip on you, all you can think of is how your heart feels like it's stopped beating, and your insides sort of melted into this stagnant goo. All you can think of are the lowest parts of your life, and that you've never been happy and never will be._

_She said that it_ _'s like Death's jerk friend_. Hermione had smiled again, a sad little upturn to her mouth.  _And a sneaky bastard._

Snape didn't know why he was thinking of that conversation now, when the cold was descending, the light flickering, Hermione having seemingly disappeared into the ether. Now that the group had fallen silent, as though dreading something, waiting for something.

Another conversation popped into his head, another image of Hermione sitting cross-legged on her bed, his mattress pressed up against hers at the bed and breakfast. She had been smiling at him, like she often did. Had she stored them up throughout her life, brought them out only to drive him mad? He could count the number of people in his life that had looked at him that warmly on one hand, with fingers leftover. And there she was, or had been, now gone, and it was so cold….

"Heating failure," Snape called out suddenly, surprising himself. He pried at the corner of his National Trust sticker with his fingernail, thankful for the proof that Hermione had indeed been in existence to stick it to his coat, her palm flat against his chest. "Malfunction in the electrical systems. For your safety, I'm afraid we must insist that everyone proceeds to the nearest exit. In an orderly fashion, if you please."

"You are?" the tour guide said, snapping out of his sudden funk and his face once again losing all essence of its friendliness, his round cheeks glowing red in the candlelight.

"Maintenance," was Snape's obvious lie, but either they didn't care or were only too eager to leave, because soon the entire group was out the door except for him, and he was finally able to loudly shout, "Hermione?"

His footsteps echoed in the cavernous room. Every chair was empty, all twenty. The wood of the table, the chairs, the mantle glowed in the candlelight, reflecting every flickering bit of light. For a moment, Snape imagined he could see a brief reflection in the centre of the table: green light, a pair of eyes, terrified, then empty. His insides lurched.

"Her-mi-o-ne?" he called again, the name coming out in cut-off pieces.

There was a  _bang_ , a sudden shuffle of footsteps, a frazzled, "Severus, I—" and then the words cut off. Snape turned to find Hermione standing at the door the group had come through, her arms rigid at her side, her expression lost in shadow and the candlelight dancing in her lenses.

"Where were you?" Snape asked.

It was getting colder. His breath seemed to cling to his lips in crystals, freeze on the growing facial hair he hadn't managed to shave in days. His stomach lurched again, and the drawing room seemed to grow darker, as if one by one, the candles were flickering out.

"Hermione?" he thought he said, but the word didn't pass his lips.

And Hermione wouldn't have heard it, because she gave out a piercing scream, shook violently, and collapsed onto the floor in a shuddering, twitching heap.

 

* * *

 

Hermione came to in the shut tearooms, propped up in an armchair with a rapidly cooling cup of tea set in front of her — a frustrating cup of tea, as Severus's request for hot cocoa had gone ignored. He'd nicked a chocolate bar from the register but was being watched; he bid his time breaking it into pieces still in its foil, and slipped one into Hermione's tea as she stared blearily down at the cup and saucer, then up at the tour guide who was checking his phone, obviously wondering how much time he was meant to allow her recovery before he could go home.

"What happened?" Hermione said, staring at the tea, then up at the ceiling, then at her hands as if they were new.

"Do you want to go to hospital?" the tour guide said too loudly, and Hermione flinched.

"No," she said. She touched a trembling hand to her forehead and inhaled sharply. "I'm fine."

"She has seizures," Severus explained, lying again. "It was a minor one. She  _will_ be fine."

Hermione shot Snape a perplexed glance.

"We're closing in five minutes," the tour guide said. He checked his phone again, and Snape could almost hear the man think, F _our minutes_.

"We'll hurry," Snape said.

Hermione prodded a finger through the delicate china handle of the teacup.

"What happened?" she asked again.

"Do you want to see a doctor?" Snape whispered, low so that the guide wouldn't hear him admit to the possibility.

"No." Her tea slopped twice before she managed to hold the cup to her lips without spilling. She took a sip and made a face. "Sweet."

Snape fingered the chocolate beneath the table and was pleased to see that Hermione's hands had already stopped shaking.

She finished the tea despite her protestations and they were kicked unceremoniously out the front gate, the tour guide offering them a lift up the drive, surely only to make absolutely sure they had left. Hermione gave a feeble wave when they exited the car, and Snape did nothing but begrudgingly thank him and stick his wrinkled National Trust sticker to the back of the passenger's headrest.

Snape supported Hermione to the bus stand, and her initial refusal only meant it was a longer journey with her arm draped around his shoulders. Snape hoped desperately that it wouldn't be long until the next bus, until they could go back to the sterile roadside hotel and he could wrap Hermione up with all the duvets he could find, set out in front of her a veritable chocolate feast. He didn't know why he knew it would help; he just did. He had already fed Hermione the remainder of the chocolate bar, but its effects seemed to be limited; while her hands had stopped shaking in the tea room, once every few seconds her arm would give a jolt from around Severus's neck, nearly winding him, her fingers twitching as though her nerves were on fire. For Severus's part, his steps were slow, like he was wading through mud. His insides felt liquid, made of soup, and yet even with Hermione hanging from his side, he felt frozen from the skin in, the chill following them, the blackness lurking behind them, over them, to the side of them at the otherwise empty bus shelter.

Ten minutes later the bus came, and even it was dark, empty except for a surly bus driver who didn't say a word as he took Hermione's money and gave them change for Severus's single ticket back to the hotel.

It was only minutes back to town but it seemed hours on the winding country roads, the nauseating stop-start-stop through the town centre. Neither of them thanked the driver as they disembarked, and neither of them said a word to the other as they took the lift to their second story hotel room.

The bed was still unmade on Hermione's side, but he pulled back the covers for her anyway, drew them back over her shoulders, feeling oddly used to this, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, caring for another human being. Even their room was freezing, and Snape had rushed to find a thermostat when he heard Hermione's small voice from the bed: "Severus?"

He stopped, turned, for some reason feeling as though he'd been caught in the middle of a lie.

"I'll put the kettle on," he said in answer.

"No," she said. "Could you sit down next to me?"

"Do you want a doctor?" Snape asked again, mentally chastising himself for not having taken the guide up on the offer when  _it_  had happened. What if it hadn't been related to… _this_? What if she needed help? What if—

" _No,_ " Hermione insisted; she obviously meant the word to be forceful, but it still came out thin. She was on her back, mummified in the sheets Snape had tucked in; she squirmed slightly, working them loose from beneath the mattress, and tried to sit up.

"Don't—" Hermione began. Snape was already at her side, pushing her back down. "Stop it," she said. "Your hands are freezing. Come under the covers."

Snape stopped, his hands fallen away, the thin heat of her shoulders rapidly dissipating from his palms.

"Why," he said.

"I need someone next to me," she said.

After a moment of careful consideration, he obliged; his shoes landed on the floor with two  _thunks—_ he kept his socks on, because it seemed inappropriate to take them off. He kept clear space between them, not able to help but feeling, despite her request, that this was so many different and unique sorts of wrong ( _What would she say if she_  knew? he thought for the millionth time.  _She wouldn_ _'t say anything; she'd be gone._ ) He allowed himself to twist slightly so he could face Hermione, leaving at least a half-inch of space between the bone of his knee and the swell of her upper thigh.

"Where did you go?" he asked at last.

"The cellar," she replied. She shivered against him and he tried very hard to keep from cringing away.

"I didn't know there was a cellar," he said.

"It was staff only," she admitted. "I helped myself."

"How resourceful," Snape remarked dryly, and she appeared to give a small smile, though she was still having intermittent shudders, shaking the bed. "Did you know it?" Snape asked.

"I thought I did," she admitted, "like, someone had told me something about it, but I didn't recognize it. It was just storage. Full of boxes of old brochures and costumes."

"Nothing about it at all."

She shuddered again, seeming to inch closer to his side.

"No," she said, "until…"

"You found me," Snape said.

"In the dining room."

"The drawing room."

"Whatever. The table…I thought…" She shuddered again, then began shaking, her movements more violent. Snape set aside all feelings of  _wrongness_  and placed an arm around her shoulder, not knowing if he was doing anything to steady her, not entirely sure he wasn't shaking himself.

"What did you think?" he whispered.

She paused, then her voice caught as she said, "Pain. Agony."

"What did you see?"

"Nothing. My eyes were shut."

"You'd been there before?"

"I must have. I don't remember. I don't think I've ever even been to this part of the country. I…" She stopped. "I don't know what else to say. That's all I know." She exhaled. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"But—"

"I want to feel better. I feel—" She swore, such an uncharacteristic word for her to voice. "I feel like I'll never be warm again."

She gave three shaking breaths, her chest rising and falling, her ribs expanding against his own narrow frame. He felt her breath, too, the only warm thing in the room, a mist in the air, on his neck. His chin.

His lips.

It wasn't expected, the feel of her mouth on his. It wasn't planned, either. Days ago, Snape had never thought he would share an hour with this woman, never mind a room, never mind a bed. But here she was next to him, her shaking growing worse, both their legs splaying out awkwardly so they could close in on each other, so Snape's hands could close around her shoulders, slide down the knit of her jumper to her upper arms, the sensitive insides of her elbows, close around her back. He was terrible at this, he knew — it was something he'd done so rarely before, and—

He promptly let her go and fell back to the opposite side of the bed.

"Good god, Hermione," he said. "I'm sorry, I—"

"Think I've been wanting to do that for a while," Hermione said, pink-faced. "I'm sorry," she added. She grimaced, reading his terrified expression completely wrong (though he wasn't sure if there was a right way to read it). "I'm so sorry."

"No, I—" Snape stopped and wrung the cuffs of his shirt in his hands. "Are you feeling any better?"

She gave a few more breaths, and there was no shiver in her exhale. "I think so."

"We need hot chocolate, I think," Snape said, nearly leaping from the bed. He smoothed the covers, pocketed his wallet, and said, "I'll go and purchase a few essential items from the corner shop. You—" He turned on the television and threw her the remote control. "—will enjoy some mindless entertainment. And when I return, we will drink and pretend none of this happened."

"But—"

"Back in a few minutes," Snape grumbled.

He had to keep himself from running out the door.

It was on the brisk walk to the shop that Snape realized that Hermione wasn't the only one who felt better. The exercise was warming him, and his face was still burning, his lips twitching with an inexplicable tingle. His insides were back in the appropriate order, no longer making him feel heavy, or sick. The black mood that had chased them from the manor had seemed to lift, the darkness breaking, the bleak thoughts that had come along with it vanished into the less visited parts of his mind. He had not intended it to happen, but it had. It had helped.

Chocolate would help better.

"You going to pay for that?" a boy at the counter shouted, and Snape started, looked up to see that he was already half-way out the door of the corner shop with a tin of Cadbury's hot chocolate in his hand.

"Apologies," he grumbled, and threw too much money toward the register.

He didn't know why he was in a hurry. Why he had an inexplicable spring to his step. He almost (almost) hummed as he climbed the stairs up to their room and pushed the door open, the key card turning the light in the door the most cheerful shade of green. Hermione's side of the bed was empty but the bathroom light was on, the fan going. He switched the kettle on, turned the heat down, and collapsed onto the bed, wondering at what point it was appropriate and who should be the one to separate it into two.

It was only when he flicked the television back on that something twigged in his brain.

He hadn't heard one footstep from the bathroom. He sat up, flushed red. He hadn't noticed it when he came in: all the books left in a pile on the bedside table, the ones she had kept stuffed in her bag when they left for the manor that afternoon. Her rucksack was no longer splayed open on the chest of drawers, and her diary no longer sat atop her bedside table. Even her side of the duvet was pulled back, hospital corners, so tightly it looked like she'd never been there at all.

No toothbrush in the bathroom. No steam on the mirror, the shower curtain pulled back, dry. His hat sitting on the vanity, inside-out

"Hermione?" Snape said, called out into the corridor until someone shouted at him to shut up. He threw open the bedroom windows, stuck his head outside, craned to see if she'd once more disappeared in her socks into the garden to sit and think, but he couldn't imagine why she would take all her things with her.

"Hermione?" he called anyway, only to hear her name echo back to him from the speakers on the television.

He stopped, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

The twenty-four hour news had cycled over again, repeating the same stories it had before he'd left for the shops. He collapsed on the end of the bed to see Hermione: bushy-haired, tan and with her large-toothed smile staring narrow-eyed out from the screen. Large letters on a blue background beneath her face: MISSING.

"—a history of mental illness," the newscaster was saying. "She is highly suspected to be in the company of this man—" Severus's own face appeared on the television: the photo from his provisional driver's license, ten years out of date, leering and unattractive. "—Severus Snape. Snape has been previously arrested and charged with—"

Snape turned off the television, folded in on himself on the edge of the bed, cursing himself, his breath a hiss in the silence.

But even in the dark, and the quiet, he could still see the words splashed across the screen, as if they'd been burned there.

Hear them, as if they'd been hammered into his ears.

Hermione Granger, last seen with Severus Snape.

Severus Snape the villain.

Severus Snape the criminal.

Severus Snape the murderer.


	15. To the Library!

**Chapter Fifteen**

_**To the Library!** _

 

Hermione was surprised that her first few days at home weren't spent locked in her room, crusts of bread squished beneath the door, and only let out for controlled toilet breaks and the odd petting of Crookshanks. Her mobile wasn't taken away (which would have been the greatest irony, really), nor were her windows bolted shut. "You're twenty-five," her mother had said once the initial shock had worn off. She had offered no further explanation, but Hermione guessed at two hidden meanings: One, that she was old enough to control her own movements, and two: she was old enough to know better.

Despite the fact that she wasn't grounded, she kept to her room regardless and spoke little to anyone. She supplied her parents with the basic information, of course, with the odd defensive statement thrown in for her own good:  _I_ _'m an adult. I_ did _contact you. It was my choice. I was fine!_ The police were called and an officer seemed only too eager to make an appearance, sit on the end of her bed, and fix her with an expression so disbelieving it was as though he'd never made a poor decision in his life.

The officer said Snape's name and she jumped so hard she hardly heard the question.

"Sorry?" she said.

"Do you want to press charges?" the officer repeated. "Has he done anything to hurt you?"

"No," Hermione lied, feeling like her insides had been scooped out. "He hasn't."

Her diary fell open on her desk as soon as the officer left, and she took her favourite biro tight in her fist. The ink was running out, and she made lines hard enough to dent several pages beneath.

_BETRAYER._

That word was huge, taking up an entire page.

 _LIAR_ filled the next.

She had trusted him. She had told him so much, nearly everything. She had thought he was a friend. Ignored all the little oddities: no family, no friends, and despite his assertions that he worked in  _acadaemia,_  no real proof that he had any sort of job at all. He hadn't hurt her, maimed her, committed any sort of illegal offense. He'd served his time, apparently. Was a free man…free to appear in her life, build up her confidence, make her think that perhaps finally,  _finally_  she had met someone who understood, someone who cared, someone who…

_Had been in prison for murder._

She burned  _BETRAYER_ in the fireplace; her Christmas stocking hung above the mantle, already half-full.

Part of her hadn't believed it when the words tumbled out of the newscaster's mouth. The woman's face had been an odd blue-white on the television screen, and so blank that it was as if the words meant nothing, just lines to throw out to the public along with two faces to look out for: the poor girl and her monstrous kidnapper. The monstrous kidnapper she'd  _kissed_ —

 _LIAR_  burnt to ash.

There was truth to the cliche…burning the words made her feel better, if only minutely. She would have rather stopped thinking, especially about that evening: what she had done, what she had encouraged. She had been mourning the boy who didn't exist, she reminded herself, and in pain from whatever strange turn her mind had taken at Faithless House. She was in need of comfort; he was there. And she had been watching him for days, trying to quell the fact that something about Snape excited her….

 _Of course he_ _'s exciting_ , Hermione thought furiously to herself.  _He_ _'s insane_.

Apparently, she was the only one who  _didn't_  want to talk about him. She suddenly found herself popular at parties — her parents refused to leave her as they attended company soirees, small drink dos she hadn't actually been invited to, and informal gatherings to watch rugby in pubs. She wore pointed pompom hats and drank enough mulled wine to fill a bathtub — which would have counteracted badly with her medication, if she had actually been taking it. And once everyone else had had a few warm glasses, their faces rosy and hot, the questions came bursting forth.

"It all sounds terribly exciting," her parents' work colleague Dr Jenkins said at the first Christmas party after Hermione returned home. He had what must have been his fifth glass in his hand, and his velvet waistcoat was straining at the buttons. Hermione always tried not to look at his mouth; he had unsettlingly bad teeth for a dentist. "An illicit runaway—"

"I didn't run away," Hermione cut in. "I'm old enough to make my own choices."

Jenkins swept a paper serviette across his sweating forehead. "I remember when you were up to here." He flung his hand somewhere near his knees.

"I don't think we met until I was a teenager."

"Even so," Dr Jenkins said, distracted by the light cast by the crystal chandelier on the moulded ceiling. "So what was it, then? Tall and dark, I can see, but handsome? And a  _mur_ —"

"Shut up," Hermione said, and Jenkins's face fell.

" _Excuse me_?" he retorted.

Hermione's mother dragged her away by the wrist. Any other day, Mrs Granger would have laughed at the colour flooding Jenkins's face. Instead, they all went home early.

Reward enough.

But it couldn't be avoided. Christmas Eve was the worst, because Hermione had been fool enough to imagine what it would have been like, still out there with Snape. Perhaps they would have gone to church in their town _-du-jour_ , bundled up for midnight mass, squeezed into a pew together to read aloud from tattered orders of service as the bells chimed midnight. There was magic in the air at Christmastime, in the cold tinge, the frosty walk home in the dark. They would have been friends by then, if she hadn't found out. Perhaps he would have returned her kiss. Perhaps he would have told her himself, and explained it, and made it okay….

Or perhaps he would have killed her, too.

No, it was supposed to be better here with her aunt, uncle, and three cousins, the youngest of which was not thrilled to share her room that night.

"So are you, like, married?" Tabitha asked when she bundled herself into Hermione's bed, whilst Hermione attempted and failed to make herself comfortable on her mother's yoga mat on the floor.

"No," Hermione said.

"But you ran away."

"No I didn't," Hermione said. "I told my parents I was going somewhere, so I went somewhere. I'm twenty-five. When you're twenty-five you're allowed to do that."

"But not when you're crazy."

"Good night, Tabitha."

She had strange dreams that night. Cold ones, but happy — rose-tipped noses, snowballs, buying sweets from glass jars in a shop that smelled of Cornish fudge and cinnamon. Ron was there, she thought — even in her dream guilt unfurled in her chest over even entertaining the thought of kissing someone else, never mind  _him_ —

She woke up cold. Crookshanks was watching her from the lip of her mattress. Her cousin was gone.

They'd started breakfast without her.

"Sleep well, Tiny Tim?" Hermione's father asked when she appeared in the kitchen. He was doing the washing up and wearing her Welsh dragon apron, the tail curling around his neck to tie at the nape.

His attempt at humour was lost on her. She blinked. "Sorry?"

"You're limping."

Hermione looked down. Her toe was bleeding through her purple sock.

"Oh," she said. "Must've kicked the bed in my sleep."

"So hard you started bleeding?" he said.

"No, I tried to knock over a bin a few days ago." It seemed stupid now, and embarrassing. She had tried to push every detail of those days spent with Snape, with Dean, out of her head, but every throb of her toe pulsed through her, pain screaming across her veins, reminding her that she was in that state of limbo she had been so keen to ignore. That she still didn't have what she wanted. That she had abandoned Bathilda Bagshot's book with Snape, and every day she felt both great relief and great regret that she had left it behind.

"Better go clean that up, then," her dad said. "I'd rather not have to clean blood out of the carpets." He pouted, trying to make her laugh. "Not on Christmas Day."

At least they had waited on presents. Hermione had nowhere near as many as her cousins — she had not asked for much, and had been half expecting to have none (in her head, she could quite clearly imagine her aunt's cackle and proclamation of " _Someone_ _'s_  been naughty this year.") but she had already accumulated a modest molehill next to her cousins' mountains: a few small parcels, two that were obviously wrapped boxes of Milk Tray (just like every year), and another long, lopsided box still in its brown paper, addressed to her in a strangely familiar hand.

They took turns opening gifts, and the others looked on with interest as she picked up the long box she had saved for last and began carefully lifting the corners.

"Who's it from?" her mother asked. Beneath the paper, the box was white, glossy, and Hermione panicked for a moment, thinking it might be lingerie. But there was a slip of paper attached to the top, folded over, a brief line written in green:

_I noticed your biro was running out. Happy Christmas. SS_

Hermione felt her face flush and asked, "When did this arrive?"

"In yesterday's post, I think," Mrs Granger replied.

Hermione checked the wrapping: posted first class. Sent the twenty-third, or the twenty-second. After she'd left him.

_Why?_

She tore the tape and lifted the lid. Her hands were shaking as she tried to push the thought of  _please don_ _'t be body parts_  out of her head.

The fear lifted and her hands stilled.

"Huh," she grunted.

No body parts, no anger, obvious or otherwise. It was only a feather quill, short and deep navy with a fine brass point on the end, and beside it a bottle of ink in the same blue as the feather.

"That's nice," her dad said blandly. "Who's it from?"

"Friend from school," Hermione replied. She buried the note in the pile of wrapping.

"I didn't know you were still in touch with someone from school," her mum said. She reached out and ran her fingers along the shaft of the quill. "Pretty. Bit impractical, though. Will you use it?"

"I don't know," Hermione said.

Attention was distracted — Tabitha was squealing over a new mobile phone. Hermione ran the nib beneath her thumbnail, feeling the cold metal bite into the soft flesh of her finger, then hurriedly packed her quill away beneath the five pairs of socks and twin pack of Milk Tray in her modest pile of gifts.

 

* * *

 

It was another four days until the National Archives re-opened, and those four days were an agony of phone calls to no one important and promises that wouldn't be kept. She rang the police on Boxing Day only to be told they wouldn't tell her anything about Snape _,_ despite the fact that they had been oh-so-concerned for her safety whilst she was with him. It was only when her voice grew shrill that she was promised her assigned detective would ring her back in January. Phone calls and e-mails to the offending news station went ignored while they aired rolling coverage of the tsunami in Thailand. Stayed and embarrassed for her fervour, Hermione sat on her hands and waited impatiently for the twenty-ninth to finally arrive.

The morning of the twenty-ninth, at precisely 8:59 AM, Hermione stood in front of the National Archives, coat already draped over her arm, phone already in her pocket, waiting for the lights to turn on.

She was the first visitor through the door.

The staff looked hungover and her footsteps were embarrassingly loud as she made her way up to the first floor. The girl at the help desk stared at her as she approached, eyes narrowed, looking to be thinking so hard she forgot to say good morning.  _She recognises me_ , Hermione thought.  _Brilliant_.

"Court records?" Hermione said by way of greeting, her fingers skimming the edges of her reader's ticket.

The girl opened her mouth to say something, paused, then said, "Do you know which court?"

Hermione hesitated. "It might have been Lincoln Crown Court, unless Cokeworth has its own?"

The girl still looked immovably confused as her fingers moved across the keyboard, each stroke of the key slow, deliberate, as if Hermione was unnerving her. "It does," she said.

"Let's try that, then," Hermione said.

"Year?" the girl asked.

"I don't know," Hermione said. She had prepared for that query and had thought herself in circles…she couldn't decide which question she wanted to know the answer to most, the  _when_ , the  _whom_ , or the  _why?_  "Most likely sometime after…1970, 1975?" Hermione said. "I suppose?"

The girl frowned, then said, "Name?"

Hermione hesitated, her reader's ticket sticking to the palm of her hand.

"Severus Snape," she whispered.

"Sorry?" the girl said.

"Severus Snape!" The hiss echoed. Hermione blushed, and the girl's eyes grew wide, mouth falling open as recognition took hold.

"Oh," she said. She hurriedly looked away and slid Hermione's ticket from beneath her hand.

"It should be up in half an hour," she said a moment later.

"It?" Hermione croaked out.

"The indictment."

"Only one?"

"Were you expecting more?" she asked.

 _I was hoping for none_.

"No," Hermione said.

The girl slid her card back across the table.

Hermione spent the following thirty minutes in turmoil as she waited for the papers to materialise in her locker. It seemed an unkind amount of time to wait, with her bouncing on her feet, worrying the hem of her shirt, thoughts and feelings pulling her in a million different directions. She had to wash her hands twice, paranoid about oils destroying the paper, gripped hard at her trousers and worried that when the indictment arrived she'd want to rip it to shreds. Her mouth went dry once her number appeared on the arrival screen; her heart was hammering, her legs gone numb.

She had to take two steady breaths when she sat down with the folder, placed it in front of her on the table. It seemed insufficiently light.

 _It won_ _'t change anything_ , Hermione told herself, fingers skimming the edge of the folder.  _It won_ _'t change what's happened. All it will change is what you know about it._

She flipped the cover open.

She needn't have even sat down. It was only a single yellowed page, text unexpectedly short, but there it was: his name, Severus Snape. It seemed so insignificant in the dour typeset.  _Date of birth: 9 January, 1960_.  _Cokeworth Crown Court, 6 October, 1977_. So she had been right about his age…he was forty-four, almost forty-five.  _Too old for you_ , she thought with a bitter laugh.

Her eyes found the most important word and her stomach fell, her palms flat and cold, suctioning to the table.

 _And convicted of murder at the age of seventeen_.

There were no other details, nothing to answer the  _whom_  or  _why_ : what had happened, how long he had been jailed, not even the name of the person he had killed. And  _MURDER_  written out in big, black, bold letters, as if the word didn't hold enough weight on its own. Hermione couldn't stop staring at it. She felt as though she could fall into the page, topple into that courtroom to see Snape behind glass. Seventeen-year-old Snape; she pictured him looking much the same as he had days ago, only thinner, lankier, with hair a bit longer and in bad need of washing. A sour teenager's face even less prone to cheer. A bit spotty, perhaps. And the eyes…what expression would there be? Anger or sorrow? Regret or fear?

Did he know it even then, that something was wrong? Something was missing? Hermione had felt such shame over failing her A-Levels, and Snape had been imprisoned for murder. All the time she thought they were the same: same background, same wants, same goals.

It was infuriating to think how wrong she had been.

Why didn't he hate her? He had even sent her a Christmas gift, re-initiated contact. Offered no explanation, no apology. Yet her quill still sat in her desk, shut in her drawer so Crookshanks couldn't get to it, tucked away among her school reports and the jewellery her grandmother had given her before she died.

Hermione frowned at  _MURDER_  for a few seconds more.

Why didn't she hate  _him_?

She took a deep breath and turned the page over, expecting nothing more than a blank face. Her heart stuttered when she realised she'd been wrong. There it was, the script so much meeker than on the other side, as though it had been printed as an afterthought:

_Application for appeal granted 8 August, 1979._

_Released on bail._

There was nothing more: no follow-up, no proceedings on the outcome of the appeal. It must have gone well, Hermione thought. How couldn't it have, if Snape was still walking around, breathing, talking, a free man?

It  _must_ have.

 _Wishful thinking_ , the hated reasonable side of her brain reminded her as she returned the folder to the girl at the desk with a 'thank you' and a smile. She didn't know law, not really, but she knew it was full of technicalities. Sleights of hand that could make innocent people guilty and guilty people free.

Which one was Snape?

_The man who sent me a quill for Christmas._

A murderer.

_A friend._

"There's something else," the girl at the desk said, catching Hermione just as she turned to leave. "A different Snape in the database." Her eyes were wide, her hands pale and still hovering over her keyboard. "We don't have the documents here, it's really only a name on the computer, magistrate's court. I just…thought you might want to know."

Hermione thanked her, her head detached, and traveled home on the Underground, feeling a stranger in her own body. Mrs Granger was splayed out on the sitting room sofa when she arrived, the ornament box balanced in her lap, tinsel strewn across the floor and tangled between Crookshanks's front paws.

"How was the library?" her mother asked.

"Fine," Hermione said, then disappeared upstairs. She reappeared a few minutes later, scarf wrapped about her neck, mittens and hat on, heavy rucksack thrown over her shoulder.

Her mother looked up and a glass star fell into the box, breaking off one of its legs.

"Where are you going?" her mother breathed, the question full of warning.

"I'll be safe," Hermione said. She drew her arm through her other strap and bent to kiss her mother on the cheek. "Will ring you every day. Promise."

She was gone before Mrs Granger could say one coherent word to stop her.

 

* * *

 

The house on Spinner's End smelled of tinned tomato soup burnt crisp at the edges. He hadn't yet done the washing up from his grand Christmas feast (a bowl of soup, two mugs of tea, and a mince pie from a half-blind neighbour who didn't watch the news) and the dishes were still stewing in the sink, the burnt out light bulb in the kitchen limiting his time spent there to the brightest of daylight hours.

It had not been a good Christmas.

He had tried to read, skimming through the books Hermione had left, but he found himself thinking instead of reading, turning pages without absorbing one printed word. What was he thinking about? Hermione, mostly, if he was completely honest. The twitch of her body as she fell to the floor at Faithless House. The single-mindedness in her attention to her reading. Her smile, her teasing him; he would have given anything to just have her look at him and say in the most withering of tones,  _"Professor_."

Instead he got  _PERVERT_  spray-painted across his front door, as though Hermione had been five instead of twenty-five and not a woman capable of making her own choices.  _MURDERER_ was also scratched into the sitting room window, apparently just in case he had forgotten. He was also thinking that at any moment the door would splinter open and he'd be hauled out onto the street, thrown onto the kerb face-down, his mouth wedged open by concrete and—

There was a knock on his door. Three thirty in the afternoon, the twenty-ninth of December, only a week and a half before his forty-fifth birthday. _In the news_ , he thought as he went to open it,  _when they report on finding my body, they_ _'ll round up. I'll be forty-five forever._

He wasn't hurrying enough. He was meant to rush to meet his abuser, judging by the rapid-fire pounding on the door. He stopped five feet in front of it, took a deep breath, only to hear a quiet and familiar voice whisper, "Severus?" through the cracks in the weather stripping.

He stopped short. It took him several seconds to answer, like his limbs were tied back with great pieces of elastic, threatening to throw him back into the depths of the house.

The door swung open though he didn't remember sliding the bolt.

She was there.

No glasses, no lips covering her smile. Her hair wild and full beneath the constricts of a cherry wool hat.

"Hermione," Snape said.

It was.

It was Hermione.

She was Hermione, and she was speaking, her mouth moving, words coming out.

"Professor," she said. Her smile was genuine. Her eyes alighted upon  _PERVERT_ , but she didn't even flinch. "Is it too late," she said instead, "to wish you a happy Christmas?"

 

* * *

#

 **A/N:** My great thanks to you, readers and reviewers. You have been absolutely wonderful and extremely encouraging. Chapter Sixteen will be coming soon, and here's a hint: it's titled  _Snape_ _'s Worst Memory_.


	16. Snape's Worst Memory

**Chapter Sixteen**

_**Snape** _ _**'s Worst Memory** _

 

Hermione braved the dark kitchen to make tea whilst Snape went to the corner shop for milk. She was still there when he arrived back — which he would have teased her about, in any other situation besides this one.

She looked very grave sitting by the fire, her cheeks flushed the same red as her cabled jumper, her stocking feet (new socks, bright blue) tucked beneath her knees as she made herself comfortable in his favourite chair. For the first time in weeks, the warmth of the fire actually seemed to permeate rather than radiate. Snape sank into the sofa across from her, tea in hand, and waited for her to speak.

"Who did it?" she asked after a long, stabbing silence. She shifted; her jeans squeaked against the fabric of the chair. "The paint on the door."

"The locals hate me," Snape replied. "Being in the news just gave them an opportunity to show me how much. You missed the fantastic etch-work in the front window."

Hermione twisted around in her seat, settled back once she realised she wouldn't be able to see the scratches with the curtains shut. "What have you done to them?" she asked. Snape raised his eyebrows and she gripped her knees in her hands. "I mean…I went to the library," she said. "Well, the National Archives. To read about you."

"Oh?" Snape said. He took a sip of his tea, his gaze fixed on the hottest part of the flame.

"Your indictment," Hermione said.

She stopped, apparently waiting for him to speak. He said nothing.

"I don't see where 'pervert' comes in," she said, her face thankfully unmoved as she spoke the word aloud. "The indictment said you killed someone."

"Did I," Snape said dryly.

"That's what it said."

"It said I was convicted of killing someone," Snape replied.

"Yes," Hermione agreed.

"There is a difference."

"I'm aware." She slid her fingers down the trim lines of her shins. Her shoes lay at the foot of the chair — she had delayed prying them off as long as possible, as though she had been prepared to run. What had he said to make her trust him now?

"Did you see that I appealed?" he asked.

"Yes. It didn't give the outcome."

Snape made a noise and Hermione frowned at him.

"Why is that funny?" she asked, sounding hurt.

"You'll understand when I tell you," he said.

"Then tell me."

"Okay," he replied. He set his tea aside. She was watching him with the largest eyes, the most open expression. In that moment he thought, most intently, that he would lay out the very contents of his soul for her if she asked. Cut it open, pin it in place so she could look inside and examine every corner, know him so well he wouldn't have to say a word.

"I will."

 

* * *

 

Tobias Snape was not a good man. It was not a matter of opinion; it was fact. His wife knew, his neighbours knew, his son's teachers knew — it would be hard not to, the way Mrs Snape draped herself in scarves and heavy, long-sleeved jumpers year-round, and how the boy could often be seen playing alone at the park, lurking in the depths of the city library, or loitering near the shops in town long after dark. But the son was not much-loved, being too slight, too unkempt, too intense, and where other children might be ushered into the warm bosom of social services, the boy was ignored with silent hopes that one day, he'd either stand up to his father and show the old man what it was like to be on the receiving end of such abuse, or finally gather the courage to leave and never turn back.

Severus Snape was hardly the only child in need, not in Cokeworth. Teachers who tried to care had their attentions rebuffed, if not by the boy himself, then by the mother, who whenever they showed up at the door on Spinner's End with the best of intentions and the gentlest voices, would show them right back out before her husband could return home from work. Eventually, the fatigue set in. They could no longer gather the energy to care, not as long as Severus kept turning in such exemplary work, preparing so thoroughly for his exams to make sure he was sent to the very best school he'd never be able to afford to go to. Surely, they thought, with such careful attention to detail and such high levels of reasoning in his schoolwork, it couldn't be as terrible at home as his appearance would suggest?

The majority of this classmates had many of the same thoughts, though as children were less subtle in their dislike. Every once in a while the boy would surprise them with a quick barb (always just slightly dark, a little beyond most of their understanding) that would set them into surprise laughter and make the teacher tell them to be quiet before the switch came out. But these sudden bursts of respect didn't continue beyond those isolated moments, and after the laughter faded, Severus, as always, found himself feeling very alone.

Until  _her_.

It wasn't as though he'd never seen her before. She was a pretty girl, though he was too young to appreciate it at the time — it was the hair, really, a deep red that fell to her shoulders, thick and too stubborn to be neatened into the bunches she preferred. Easy to spot in the crowd of well-dressed school children that he'd sometimes see walking to the other junior school on days he was too beat up to go. He had never noticed her eyes until one day at the park when he found them staring at him through the glossy leaves of a rhododendron.

"Why are you sitting in a bush?"

The voice was high, inquisitive, and bright. Snape started and fell back against the roots, then snapped, "What's it to you?"

"You can't be comfortable," she said. "Were you sleeping under there?"

Snape fell silent, and more of the girl appeared: pale legs scabbed at the knees, a pretty floral print dress, the deep red hair that clashed with the bright pink of the flowers above her head.

"Are you all right?" the girl asked, her eyes widening.

Snape looked down; brown blood crusted the edge of his stretched-out collar.  _What had it been this time?_ he tried to remember.

"Nose bleed," he said. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yes," Snape said. He collapsed on his back, stared up through the leaves, where bits of blue sky were finally breaking through the incessant grey.

"Do you…" the girl began. She stopped, cleared her throat, apparently gathering courage. "D'you want to come play? On the swings?"

"Oh," Severus said, startled. He sat up to see her face closer. The expression was genuine, he was uneasy. "Okay."

The girl was with her sister, Petunia, and Petunia plainly didn't approve as Severus joined them — "Who are you?" was her greeting, but anything further was cut off by the younger girl snapping, "Don't be rude, Tuney," and throwing herself into the swing between them.

The girl seemed to think she could fly. She would pump and pump so high that Snape thought she would come full-circle over the bars. Only when Petunia began shrieking at her to stop would she let go, arc through the air, them tumble to a graceless landing on the grass, laughing.

The sun seemed to set early that day, the street lamps coming on even before Snape's stomach started rumbling for evening tea.

"I'm Lily," the girl said as she pulled on her jacket to leave. "What's your name?" She tore her hand out of her sister's grip; Petunia had started to physically drag her toward the gate.

"Severus," Snape said.

"Sev-er-us," Lily sounded out. "What does your family call you? Sev?"

"Yes," Snape lied.

She smiled and her sister once more took hold of her wrist. She waved and was pulled on. "Bye, Sev."

Severus hadn't expected her to be there the following day, was sure that his good fortune had been spent for the year, but he was wrong — she was there, smiling, waving, laughing as they explored the trees, the meadows, caught butterflies and let them go. It seemed too good to go on much longer — surely it would fade when summer ended? Surely they would run out of things to talk about, with how little they must have had in common? But he was wrong — Lily always found bits of conversation to latch on to, to draw out in the most delightful, engrossing way. She enjoyed schoolwork even more than he did, and they compared the futures their teachers had predicted for them. "They say I'm going to be a teacher," Lily said one hot afternoon as they sat up in an old oak tree — Snape was particularly cheerful that day, as Petunia had been at the dentist and wasn't sniffing about, looking for infractions to report back to their mother.

"A  _teacher_." Lily's face reddened with unusual anger when she said it (it was one of Severus's favourite things about her, the fact that fury was as rare in her as it was common in his father), and she tore leaves from their stalks. "They say that  _all_  the girls are going to be teachers. Or nurses, or mums. And all the boys are going to be doctors or lawyers or members of parliament."

"That's rubbish," Snape said, throwing a twig into the long meadow grass.

"I know," Lily agreed.

"If you went to my school," Snape said, "they'd say you were going to work in the mill."

"Oh," Lily said. "Is that what they've told you?"

Snape didn't answer. Instead, he bit hard on his tongue and finally unleashed a question that had been bothering him ever since he found her bright eyes staring at him through the rhododendron leaves. "Where are you going next year?"

"Next year?" She stripped another twig from its leaves and waved it about like an angry conductor, or a magician. It was one of their shared interests, magic tricks. Lily would tell Severus what she had seen on the television or at special shows at the town hall, and he would frown, trying hard to figure out the logic behind the magic. "Mum and Dad say the grammar school," she continued, but I haven't got in, yet." She twirled the twig between her fingers. "What about you?""

"Worthfield," Snape said, his voice so quiet he was surprised Lily could hear him.

"The private school?" she said. The stick drooped. "But…how?"

"Someone's paying for me to go," Snape replied. She wasn't as shocked as he thought she would be. He had imagined telling her since the minute he'd been pulled into the headmaster's office — his teacher had been so pleased, so proud, and all he could think of was,  _What am I going to tell Lily?_ "Scholarship or something," he said, concentrating hard on a knot in the branch. "The endowment fund, I dunno."

All the anger was gone — Lily was suddenly beaming. "But Sev!" she said. "That's brilliant! You can board there. And you won't have to be around  _him_  anymore, and—"

"But you won't be there."

"What?" Her eyes widened. They really were the brightest green, always so startling, impossible to look away from. "Don't worry about me."

"You're my friend," Severus said.  _My only friend_.

"I'll be fine," she said. "I'm not going to stop being friends with you because you live on the other side of town. Come on." She hooked an arm around the branch and dangled a leg over the side, dropping her twig to the grass below. "Let's go on the swings."

They talked no more about it, not through winter, not through spring, not even the next summer, when he began counting down the days until he could pack his things and leave for his new school house. Severus had wanted to say a lot more to Lily: that it seemed wrong that they'd be thrown apart to separate places; not unfair, but  _wrong_. It wasn't until he'd been told about his placement that he realised he'd been assuming that he and Lily would be going to the same school, despite the fact that the grammar schools were separate, boys to one, girls to the other; there was never a chance they would both end up somewhere else, together….

It wasn't right, he thought, but life wasn't right, and Worthfield was the rightest thing that had ever happened to him. Not only did Severus escape the grip of his father, but, much to his surprise, he made friends. The rich boys at school, his house mates, tempered their hazing on finding out that not only was Severus very good at scarpering at the slightest hint of conflict, but that he was cultivating an acid tongue and quick wit, useful for plucking off phrases to throw at the most awkward boys in their class. And Snape watched on, as if the year before, he hadn't been on the receiving line of such abuse.

It felt like banishment to have to return home on the holidays. He longed to see Lily, but his mother was reluctant to let him leave the house. Most often, she was desperate for him to stay, take some of the brunt of his father's anger that he'd been taking out entirely for her while he was away.

"Leave him." He told her once per year, around Christmastime, when he could no longer stand it. Fairy lights always went up early in Spinner's End, as if in an attempt to brighten the gloom; the white circles cast odd shadows through the panes of their sitting room window and onto his mother's pale face. The command grew deeper as he grew older, his features lengthening, his voice hollowing out and filling up with newfound command. "Go away and don't come back."

Her hand found his face and he flinched, but she didn't withdraw. Her fingers curled gently around his ear; she patted his cheek, her head shaking a silent  _no._  She never told him why.

And once per year, he made time for Lily. It was the most time he could set aside, the evening of his father's work party, when his parents went out to drink themselves stupid and left him to search through the cupboards for Christmas Eve tea. The first Christmas back, it didn't take long for him to give up on the house at Spinner's End and make plans for his escape.

His heart soared to find Lily so delighted to see him.

"Sev!" she had said, her hair bright, her eyes brighter. She was festively dressed, draped in garland and tinsel, as though she'd been attacked by a Christmas tree. Then  _she_ attacked  _him_ , throwing her arms around his shoulders and dragging him inside, shutting the snow out behind him. "You look…." She paused; Snape knew he looked much the same as he had when he left, except perhaps slightly taller. His housemaster had obviously expected him to physically flourish at Worthfield (even the masses of food and time spent outside had done little to change his slight and unhealthy appearance, and the disappointment at his failure to thrive was evident on the man's face, as though he had expected Snape to be a plant, ready to spring back from neglect with the right amount of water and sunlight).

"I have a present for you," Lily said. She was beaming as she started rummaging around beneath the Christmas tree, the skirting already invisible beneath a pile of gifts. Snape had always found her interesting to observe, and as she searched the boxes, Snape realised for the first time that she really was very pretty.

"Oh, I-" Snape began, then started again. "I didn't get you anything."

She didn't seem to hear him. "Here." She thrust a parcel into his hand and said, "Open it."

Snape obeyed. It was a pack of cards, brand new and shining, and, "A stick."

"A wand!" she said. "A  _magic_  wand. So you can show the boys at school. There's a book, there, too, of magic tricks…" She pulled aside the tissue and indeed there was a book, a man in black and white on the cover, smoke puffing from his fingertips. Lily grinned at him. "Tell me how it goes. I can't get the two-card sly to work properly."

Snape stared at the book, then at the black-painted wand in his hand.

"Er, thanks," Snape said, trying to muster up enthusiasm. His smile must have been quite frightening, because Lily's rapture faltered. "Thanks so much," he said again.

The book, the wand, and the cards went to school with him. Only the cards made an appearance outside of his trunk, bending and staining beneath grubby fingers during Snip Snap Snorum and Nine-Card Don.

As the years drew on, Lily's gifts taking up more and more space in his case, Snape felt like he was leading a double life. No one at school called him Severus — he was shouted at around the grounds with short, sharp "Snape!"s and raucous laughter, just on the right side of mocking. His friends were mostly clueless of the other Snape, the Severus that haunted the grayest end of Cokeworth, floating from park to house to the less dodgy part of the suburbs where the Evans family lived. No one asked about his parents, or what life was like when he left the confines of Worthfield. And when he returned from painful weeks spent curling up in his tiny bedroom at Spinner's End, his uniform streched down from the tie at the neck to the crisp pressed cuffs, and no one would spy the bruises on the arms, chest, or the beer-bottle cuts on his back.

At least, for over five years, they _hadn_ _'t._

It had gone on so long, Snape's secret life. He had been sure he would leave Worthfield with no one any the wiser. But a particularly violent Easter holiday when he was seventeen had been met with unseasonably warm weather and a change in the sport schedule to football, effective immediately upon their return, short uniform required.

"Snape, what on God's green earth happened to you, man?" It was Jonathan, Posh Twat Number 1. Snape only liked him sometimes, mostly when he wasn't trying to copy from Snape's homework. He had cornered Snape in the locker room when he was agonising over where he'd put his knee socks and trying to bury himself in his locker so he wouldn't have to step out onto the field in his shorts. "You're black and blue," Jonathan said, "and Christ, I think I see some green there."

"Car accident," Snape replied, pulling his shirt down on his arms, trying to stretch the fabric to cover more than it was meant to.

"My cousin was in a car accident." That was Reddy, Posh Twat Number 2. Reddy liked to catch insects for biology and pry off their legs while they were still alive, but was built of solid muscle and steel bone and was excellent at sneaking wine and cigarettes into school. "He didn't look anything like that."

"It was a bad one," said Snape.

"On your legs?" A crowd was gathering now. His entire group of friends: Juro, Rightman, Berret were all gathering around him, looking him up and down, trying to find fault.

"He always has them after."

That small voice was Berret — quiet, unassuming, little Berret, as threatening as a ladybird, brighter than anyone gave him credit for.

"After holidays," Berret continued. "He always has bruises. He tries to cover them up but I've seen them."

The other boys gave Berret a sideways glance, but their attention soon returned to Snape.

"Who was it?" Reddy asked. His hands were in fists, and Snape couldn't help but feel a sudden rush of fondness for his anger. "Who did this to you?"

"I think," Berret piped in again, "it might have been his father."

"Is that true, Snape?" Jonathan asked. His handsome face was expressionless, his eyes hard and cold. "Did your father do this to you?"

Snape didn't answer.

His reluctance was the only confirmation they needed.

Their team murdered the other house on the playing field, twelve to zero.

That night, they celebrated their victory.

And began to plan their revenge.

 

* * *

 

Hermione's eyes were wide, black in the flickering light of the fire, the rest of her swallowed up in the darkness of evening. She was wearing her shoes again, Snape noticed with a pang.

"He hurt you," she said. "So you planned your father's murder."

Snape spun his mug between his fingers.

"I'm not saying he didn't deserve it," Hermione continued, then rushed to add, "I mean, I would never  _advocate_  it, but Severus, were you—"

"Serious?" he said before she could finish her sentence with anything else. "I wasn't."

"The others were?"

He bent forward and threw another log onto the fire.

"Tell me," she urged him.

Snape paused for a long moment, prodding the fire, the remnants of his tea bitter on his tongue.

"I gave them the key," he said. "I had one made for Jonathan."

"You—you gave them a key to your house."

"You must understand, Hermione," he said, "that when we spoke of it, they were only planning to scare him. I'm not saying I'm proud, but I was seventeen, and what they spoke of doing was so small in severity in comparison to what my father had done to me, it seemed only fair." He gave the fire another angry prod. "Life is not fair."

"What happened?" she asked, her fingers roped red by her shoelaces.

"It was August," Snape replied. "Before my last year. I knew they were coming that night. I wasn't meant to join them — my parents had never met my friends, and there was too much risk to me if I…participated. I had meant to stay awake, at least, but I didn't manage it. I fell asleep at midnight, and when I woke up, it was to my mother screaming."

The room had suddenly gone very silent, sucked of sound, of air.

"Until she stopped," Snape said.

"Oh my god," breathed Hermione. "She—"

"A cricket bat," Snape said. "A school cricket bat. They left it, after."

Hermione stared at him, open-mouthed.

"The head," he said, touching a finger to his temple. "Both of them."

"Please tell me you called 999," Hermione said.

Snape scoffed. "Of course I did."

"And—"

"They were already dead by the time they'd arrived. The boys were gone, of course. And the police came upstairs to find me with my dead parents, me with my school cricket bat and covered in blood."

"But you told them—"

"Of course I did," Snape replied. "I told them everything, every single ounce of truth. My father had been arrested before — drunk and disorderly, and once the neighbours called the police on him, before they knew better — but that was nothing compared to what their bedroom looked like that night." Snape shuddered and sank back into the sofa, drawing his jumper tight around him.

"But—"

"Hermione," Snape said with a sigh, "you must remember where I went to school, and with whom. These were the sons of very important people — politicians, bankers, the people who make the rules for people like me—" He touched a long finger to his neck. "—to follow."

"But the justice system—"

"Grandson of a judge, one of them," he said. "I didn't have a chance, not with the lawyer they assigned me."

"So they convicted you," Hermione said.

"Only one of them was even there at the trial," Snape said with a bitter laugh. "As a character witness in my defense. Though at that point, they were claiming to lessen my sentence. It wouldn't have mattered, though — with murder, a juvenile is only sentenced at Her Majesty's pleasure."

"What does that mean?"

"It's a way to make a life sentence sound more innocuous," Snape replied. "I had two years there before I lodged an appeal myself, for ineffective counsel. I think Reddy must have confessed to someone in his family, because suddenly I had a very good barrister, who still only managed to get me out of prison with a lesser conviction and a sentence of time served."

"What was it?" Hermione asked. "The lesser conviction?"

"Perverting the course of justice," Snape said. "But murder is much more memorable, isn't it? My one solace is that they allowed me to keep the house, so I wouldn't end up on the streets, but sometimes…." He stopped and gave another log an angry kick with his stocking foot. "No one had cleaned up the blood stains in the upstairs carpet."

"I'm so sorry," Hermione said.

Her shoes were on the floor again, kicked half-beneath the sagging upholstery.

"Yes," Snape said, "so am I."

 

* * *

 

Snape turned his attentions to fully rebuilding the fire, and Hermione left him to think while she attempted to make something resembling an evening meal in his darkened kitchen. She found something that looked like a tin of tomato soup in a lower cupboard and a box of matches in a drawer, and unearthed a pot from the pile in the sink. Ten minutes later a modest dinner was ready ( _must write a shopping list_ , Hermione thought to herself, because it was the only thing she could think that wasn't nebulous, feelings drawn out on emotions rather than words).

She found Snape still in the sitting room, still stoking the fire, eyes unblinking.

"Soup," Hermione said. She slid Snape's bowl onto the side table. "What happened to her?" she asked. The question seemed to have slipped out of her mind and right through her lips, as though to ease the pressure building there. "Lily," she said.

"We never spoke again," he said. "Even after I got out. She thought I'd changed."

"Had you?"

"I suppose." He took up his bowl with a nod and lifted it to his mouth, paused. "It's not a nice place," he said, "prison."

Hermione scoffed. "I was thinking it might have been school that did it."

"That, too."

Hermione sank back into her chair, balancing her bowl on a scatter cushion. She'd forgotten spoons — she, too, lifted the bowl with her hands.

"So never again," Hermione said. "Not at holidays, not once before her funeral—"

"Funeral?" Snape said. The bowl dropped, his hands holding it up halfway to his chin.

"Yes," Hermione said. She took a sip of her soup and attempted to suck the burn from her tongue as she continued. "Her funeral, or memorial, of whatever. You didn't go? I thought you might have wanted to pay your respects or something—"

"Hermione, I—" Snape paused, flustered and confused. He set his bowl aside and fixed her with a stare that made her insides go cold. "What on earth," he said, "makes you think that Lily Evans is dead?"


	17. Not Lily

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hello, everyone! Thanks so much for your patience -- I realise it took a bit longer than usual for this chapter to reach the light of day. I've been tied down with work commitments but rest assured I am still plugging away.
> 
> Also a reminder that if you fancy updates on the process or have questions (such as "When is she going to post?", "Why hasn't she posted yet?", or "Is she dead or something?") you can find me on Facebook by searching for Wonk (it will say "Writer" beneath it). I might also have a few Q&As over there in future, possibly when the story is finished, or perhaps somewhere else to keep the page spoiler-free for people only just starting the story.
> 
> Thank you again for your support and your patience, and happy reading!
> 
> ~Wonk

* * *

 

**Chapter Seventeen**

_**Not Lily** _

 

"What on earth," Snape said, "makes you think that Lily Evans is dead?"

"I…." Hermione stopped, scowled, her temples suddenly throbbing. "I don't know. Didn't you say?"

"No," Snape replied.

"You must've," Hermione insisted. "Perhaps before. Maybe—"

"Hermione," Snape continued, "Lily's not dead."

"She isn't?" Hermione's voice was very small, her throat trying to collapse in on itself.  _Lily_ _'s not dead_. He hadn't said it again, but she could still hear the thought echoing about her head, as if her skull had been hollowed out. "But someone killed her."

"No," Snape said. He took another careful sip of his soup, watching her. "Why would you think that?"

"Because someone did."

"She's not dead, Hermione."

"How do you  _know_?" Hermione said, realising at that moment that she must have been upsetting him, talking about his childhood friend like this. Right after he'd told her about his parents, too. She hoped that there wasn't an air of accusation in her voice. "How do you know she's alive?" she asked. "You don't exchange Christmas cards, do you? She could've gone off and—"

"I see her at the shops," Snape said. He was grimacing, glowering at her. "Sometimes."

"The shops," Hermione repeated.

"Or with her children in town. Only a few weeks ago, in fact."

"Do you speak to her?"

"No," Snape said, then added, "perhaps a few times, before it seemed most polite to pretend she didn't exist."

"Children," Hermione said wonderingly to herself.

"Three, I think," Snape replied. Was that a tone of bitterness? "Four? She seems to care for them."

"A boy?"

"One of them is. The youngest, perhaps. Why?"

"I don't know," Hermione said.

Snape was watching her with the most careful of expressions, with an openness Hermione had found common in her psychologists — the face of someone ready to dissect her thoughts and untangle the frazzled workings of her brain.

 _Help me_ , Hermione thought.

"Is this something to do with Ron?" Snape asked.

"Why would you say that?" Hermione said, finding herself angry at the suggestion.

"Because most of your odd turns seem to do with him."

"I'm not having an odd turn!" Hermione protested, then shrank back into her chair. " _I_ _'m_ not the one who—"

"Not now, Miss Granger," Snape snapped. "Tell me."

"I thought someone murdered her," Hermione admitted, feeling crestfallen. She didn't know why. "I thought someone killed her, and her husband, and left the baby."

"The baby," Snape said blankly.

"Years ago," Hermione sighed.

"You thought I killed her."

"No."

The fire gave a crack and a splutter. Neither of them jumped.

"You said there was something different about her," Hermione said carefully. She hadn't yet caught up with what Snape had just told her about his parents; for a week she had been imagining Snape the Murderer, blood on his hands, a trail of bodies in his wake. Despite his assurances, she was having difficulty reminding herself that the man sitting across from her was innocent. The man she felt a certain fondness for, the man who had sat on her bed with her and- "Do you think she's like us?" Hermione asked, trying to focus. "You and me and Dean?"

"Dean is a sick young man," Snape replied.

"Not Dean, then," Hermione added, feeling traitorous.

"I don't know," Snape said. His hands were folded beneath his chin, his pale fingers gleaming gold in the firelight. Both of their bowls lay at the side, forgotten.

"You said you learned magic tricks—"

"Card tricks. Foolish wand-waving. Nothing of substance. Only children's games."

"Have you ever talked to her about it, about our…issues?"

He was silent for a long moment, lips pursed, expression far away.

"No," he said.

"Could you?" Hermione asked.

"Hermione," he sighed. He ran his palms across his face, pressed his fingers to his eyes, dragged his skin down until he looked alternately young, skeletal, middle-aged again. "She is happy with her husband and her children and the fact that she has forgotten me."

Hermione's attention alighted momentarily on the front door. "I don't think anyone's likely to forget you in Cokeworth," she said.

It was a misjudged comment. Snape's face tightened again, his scowl deepening.

"Soup's gone cold," he growled, then snatched the bowls and stalked into the kitchen. A door would have undoubtedly slammed, if there had been any door between them.

He returned a full ten minutes later to find a soft, red-wrapped parcel waiting for him in his place on the sofa. Hermione remained exactly where he had left her, cross-legged, waiting patiently.

"I'm sorry I left," she said as he set the bowls back onto the table with a sigh. "I shouldn't have gone without talking to you. It could have saved us a lot of time and heartache. Well, it could have saved  _me_  a lot of heartache."

Snape looked from Hermione to the parcel, to the bowls, back to her again. Finally, he collapsed back onto the sofa and crossed one leg over the other, leaning his head back, the nape of his neck resting against the upholstery.

"If I had been you," he told the ceiling, "I would have done exactly the same."

"That doesn't make it right," Hermione shot back.

"Yes it does," he said. "You must keep yourself safe. You have family who care about you, and who were worried about you." There was something else there, a strange emotion Hermione didn't recognise thickening the words. He cleared his throat. "And to find out that I—"

"You didn't do it," Hermione interrupted.

"Facts are inconvenient to the media," Snape said wryly.

"Facts are facts," Hermione said. "I wish you would've rung me. Or sent a letter."

"Would you have listened?" Snape asked.

Hermione didn't know. She had considered blocking his number, only to realise she didn't know it, and he hadn't called her in the first twenty-four hours so she doubted he would try after. She had considered the possibility of a letter but hadn't looked for it among the Christmas post, and her mother had got to his parcel, first.

"Was that what the quill was for?" she asked. "To ease me back in?"

"You think I'm that manipulative?"

"I think you're a lot of things," Hermione replied evenly.

"It was a gift," he said.

"An odd gift."

"It seemed the right sort of thing to give you."

Hermione watched him for a moment, eyes tracing the sharp curve from his pale neck to the upward point of his chin, the shallow hills of his cheeks, the hook of his nose, his blank forehead and curtain of hair. Just as she was searching for the slightest glimpse of his eyes, he dropped his chin again and she fought the urge to look away in embarrassment. Instead, she met his puzzled expression with determination, then nodded toward the discarded parcel at his side, relieved that neither of them had mentioned The Kiss.

"Happy Christmas," she said.

"It's for me," Snape said, forehead furrowing.

"Who else would it be for?"

Snape didn't answer. He took the gift into his hands and ran a long finger beneath one flap, then the other, carefully flipping up the paper, neatly unfolding the perfectly square corners.

"I hope you like merino," Hermione said. The fire seemed to be growing very hot, hot enough to burn her cheeks.

Snape made a noise deep in his throat and swept the paper aside.

"I knitted it myself—" Hermione cut in, bumbling on. "I mean, I didn't knit it  _for_  you, I wasn't speaking to you at the time, though I suppose I knitted it for someone…. _"_ She fought off the urge to bury her face in her hands and summoned a brave smile.

"It's a hat," Snape said, flipping the brim over his fingers and stretching out the ribbing. "Black."

Hermione's blush deepened. "I suppose I must've had you in mind."

Snape continued to run his fingers along the columns of stitches, take the fabric in his hands and stretch it to and fro, while Hermione worried that the ends wouldn't hold.

"I noticed yours was a bit itchy," she said.

Snape still didn't say anything. The fabric moulded to his hands, the rib curling around his fingers. He was looking her, his eyes shining, and Hermione suddenly found herself feeling intensely uncomfortable.

"Thank you," he said, his voice a whisper.

Hermione cleared her throat. Her smile slipped away. "You're welcome."

 

* * *

 

Hermione didn't think the sitting room could grow any colder, but she was mistaken. She woke up the next morning with cold fingers and a frozen nose, and the slightest of tickles in her throat: the promise of an oncoming cold. Snape was apologetic (in his own particular way) when he woke up to find that frost had formed on the inside of the window again, but his only consolation was, "I promise my own room isn't much warmer."

For some reason, that made them both blush.

The habit they fell into was a familiar one. Conversations over takeaway and cobbled-together meals from excavations into Snape's cupboards and frosted-over freezer. Silent afternoons spent by the fire with piles of books. Crowding together on the sofa, huddled amongst the duvets, comparing findings and writing anything of note down in the diary, where Hermione had pretended not to notice Snape had written  _LILY EVANS?_ in small script in the margin, right below the cheerful and bold  _ **New symptom: knitting for murderers?**_ he seemed to have written with the sole intent of making her laugh.

 _That_  was a strange development.

Hermione was not used to having friends. She had had a few before  _it_ happened. They had not been easily formed — rather, she had acquaintances made in adverse circumstances (against terrible teachers, mostly — disturbingly common considering the cost of her education) who then turned into acquaintances with shared interests beyond picketing unfair exam practises and the use of caged eggs in the school canteen. But they were easily lost. One disagreement, one sign of things becoming the slightest bit too odd, too personal, and that tentative thread was broken in favour of girls slightly more normal and less of a know-it-all than Hermione Granger. (Hermione always thought she might have done a mite better at a school that wasn't girls only).

And after…well, no one had stuck around for long, except her parents. And Dean, despite all of their having in common being…this.

"What?"

Hermione hadn't realised she'd been staring until Snape's eyes met hers, his eyebrows raised.

"Nothing," she said, fighting off the urge to clench her teeth on the end of her pen in the best way possible: by running the replacement feather quill beneath her chin. It was unexpected, how much she found herself liking it. How it felt perfectly natural to pause for thought while dabbing the tip in ink. It wasn't as tidy and it didn't set as quickly, which meant page after page in her diary was becoming more and more splotched with spots and palmprints, but she didn't care. Somehow, it felt more honest, more real.

"Are you feeling all right?" Snape asked.

"I'm fine," Hermione said. She cleared her throat again, trying to soothe away the scratch. "Severus," she said, and he looked up at her, his face expectant, then annoyed, already knowing what she was about to say. "It's your birthday soon," she finished. She had seen it on the indictment — he'd be forty-five. Very much older than her.

"It is," he admitted.

"Do you have any plans?"

"No," he replied.

"Would you like to have plans?" She knew he was about to give her another very definitive "No" so she cut in before he could. "Something sooner, perhaps, before we leave again. What about tomorrow night? New Year's Eve? We can go to dinner."

The annoyance was gone. His face had gone slack instead, his eyebrows low, his expression befuddled.

"You want to go to dinner with me," he said.

Hermione ran her tongue across the roof of her mouth. It had suddenly gone very dry. "My treat," she said.

"But  _why_?" he replied.

She shrugged. "It's your birthday."

"Do you have any idea what being seen with me—"

Hermione huffed. "—will do for my reputation? What century is this, Severus?"

"I only—"

"What will it do for yours?" Hermione asked. "For all the gossips in Cokeworth—"  _Gossip_  seemed seemed such an inadequate expression, but never mind. "—to see the girl in the news out with you, looking neither dead nor kidnapped and instead having quite a good time."

He snorted. "High hopes."

"I enjoy spending time with you," Hermione said. She folded her diary away and set her quill aside, gripping her knees in her hands and leaning toward him, intent on showing him the strength of her conviction. "What other person have I had who I can talk to like this? No one. And you're a grumpy sod, but I think I rather  _like_  you, and we do deserve to try and enjoy the life we have now, if only a little. Now, do you want to or not?"

He mumbled something that sounded somewhat like, "Fine."

"Good," said Hermione. She tore Bathilda Bagshot's book from the pile and buried herself in chapter seventeen, hoping he couldn't see the red in her cheeks behind the pages.

 

* * *

 

Hermione could have blamed her nerves on her lack of sleep (she was having so much trouble gathering the energy to stay warm downstairs, and she still felt that cold edging in, ready to take over), but it wasn't the tiredness that made slumber difficult. It was the fact that she was about to go out and do normal adult things in a normal adult world. With Snape. On New Year's Eve.

She had taken a very odd turn indeed, and this time it had nothing to do with Ron.

Hermione also did her very adult duty of ringing her mother that morning, firmly ignoring the pleas to come home and assuring her that she was safe, happy, and about to go out and be social like an actual human being. Mrs Granger may have even sounded just slightly pleased before she signed off with a, "Just tell me if I need to come get you. Three o'clock in the morning, I don't care," only to be cut off by Hermione's, "Bye, Mum."

She was under-dressed, not having prepared for a night out, and Snape was little better, his clothes demure and well-fitted but faded from wear and washing. As odd as they looked, they felt even odder as they stood awkwardly at the register at the local Indian, waiting to be seated…then odder still to be sat across from each other in an intimate corner behind a large fern.

Hermione shook her serviette into her lap and swept her mass of hair behind her shoulders.

"I'm treating, remember," she said. "Have popadoms  _and_  a starter. Go mad."

Snape didn't say anything, terse or otherwise, and perused the menu with something resembling a smile.

They made smalltalk until they placed their orders: what they were having, what shopping needed doing, when it was going to snow. Bits of conversation that would have been boring with anyone else, but somehow weren't with Snape. Nervous, perhaps — he didn't seem the sort who often dined out, and given his history Hermione doubted he hardly did at all, in Cokeworth — but he was definitely not boring.

"Did you find anything this evening?" Hermione asked after their menus were taken away. She bent low over her Cobra and whispered, "Which one are you on again?"

"Book three," Snape said, setting his pint aside and sucking a dot of mango chutney from this thumb. "Cornish Folktales," he said.

"Anything interesting?"

"Oh, plenty of giants and mermaids and pixies, as to be expected," Snape sighed. "Nothing that struck a particular chord."

Hermione ruminated on that for a moment, then said, "I don't suppose you've seen one called  _The Three Brothers_ , have you?"

"Not that I can recall," Snape said. "Why?"

"It's in Bagshot's book," Hermione replied. "Well, it's not, it's  _referred_  to. Only in passing, it's just that…it sounds so familiar."

"It must be a common title," Snape said, his apparent only concern at the moment the fact that his popadom had shattered into a thousand greasy shards.

"Mm," Hermione agreed. "It's only…I searched for it online, and I couldn't find anything about it. As far as I can tell, there are no stories with that name."

"How odd," Snape said, still not seeming nearly as bothered as he should. Distracted, perhaps. Not by her. The restaurant was getting busy, the tables filling, only the noise of it reaching them behind the potted plant.

"I posted a message on my message board," Hermione continued. "It's been so quiet lately I doubt I'll get a response, but it's worth a try."

"Good," Snape said. He chewed thoughtfully for a few moments, then said matter-of-factly, "How long do you think it will be until I'm dragged out onto the street and summarily beaten to a paste?"

"No one can see us, which, by the way, is somewhat against the point of why we came out tonight," Hermione replied, annoyed. "Plus you'll have a better time if you stop worrying about it."

"I'll have a better time if people stop vandalising my house."

"Well, we'll be gone soon," Hermione said. "Let's leave on Monday. Scotland-ho." She lifted her pint glass, ready for a toast, but Snape still wasn't looking, and was instead trying to peer through the leaves of the fern.

" _Severus!_ " she hissed.

His head finally jerked back and he gave an insincere apology, then said, with the hopeful, hungry tinge of someone not used to eating his fill, "Do you think our food is nearly ready?"

Three Cobras later, the edges finally started to wear off the sharpness of their conversation. Hermione's Madras has been unexpectedly spicy and she expected she may have been shining with sweat, but she was beyond caring.

"Right," she said, too loud, after the waiter had come to take their plates. "It's time for an answer, Professor.  _You—_ _"_ She pointed an accusatory finger at him. "—must tell me what you do for a living."

Snape scowled at her, and all her hopes of him being a happy drunk were dashed.

"I knew acadaemia didn't pay well," Hermione said, "but I expected a slightly more comfert - pardon,  _comfort_ able living than you can afford now, hereabouts."

He stared into the depths of his drink for a few moments, swirling the bubbles, then proceeded to mumble something Hermione couldn't hear.

"Pardon?" she said.

"I write essays," he said into his beer.

"Sorry?" she said, not understanding him. "You mean as examples or—"

"No," he interrupted. "For spoilt twats who find themselves in too deep at university. I write essays for them." The smirk returned but it seemed self-effacing. "Ironic, really, considering the reason I wasn't able to go, myself."

"Dissertations," Hermione said flatly.

"Among other things."

Hermione must have been staring, because she had to blink to banish an unexpected dryness from her eyes.

"You help imbeciles sail through uni."

"Not something I'm proud of," Snape said, peering longingly into the fern again.

"It just seems like…" Hermione fumbled for the words, feeling literally tongue-tied. "…not something you'd do."

Snape grunted.

"How do they do?" Hermione said. "What are your marks?"

"I usually try and tailor it to a sample of their writing," Snape said, "so it depends on the student, but usually quite well. Very well, sometimes."

"How many degrees should you have to your name," Hermione sighed wonderingly.

"Indeed," Snape agreed.

"What subjects?"

"The sciences. Chemistry, primarily."

"Their practicals would be a  _disaster._ "

"Not my problem," Snape said. His voice was thick, his shoulder raised, as if he was fighting off the urge to hiccough.

"How did you learn it?" Hermione said. Even through beer-goggles, Snape was suddenly starting to make so much more sense. The little uneven qualities, the silent rally against injustices, the unspoken obligations. The fact that he could traipse around the countryside with her with seemingly no job to speak of.

"It was my best subject at school," Snape said. "And I studied in prison, then continued after my release."

"I didn't know they let you do that," Hermione said.

"They do."

"Better than hospital," Hermione said, suddenly angry. "They said my books 'wouldn't aid my recovery.'"

"They were probably right."

Hermione's sobriety was returning in strident steps along with her newly blossoming anger, and she clenched her fists, distracted and very aware that Snape's foot had (unwittingly, it seemed) edged into her calf beneath the table and stayed there.

"Well," Snape continued before she could reply, "if you would like to travel back in time and trade places with me, do let me know."

That request didn't have nearly as much bitterness as it could have had. Hermione looked up from her lap and caught Snape giving her a most peculiar smile.

The smile faltered — Hermione realised she was frowning at him. His foot drew away.

"What?" he said.

"Do you think," she said carefully, mind speeding along once more, "that that's what it is? Some form of time travel?"

He snorted.

"Don't be unkind," she scolded him.

"Apologies," he said dryly, "but time travel, Hermione?"

"Magic, Professor?"

He visibly bristled. "One of those terms is more open to interpretation."

"I don't think so, not the way we identify it," she replied. She clutched her chin in her fingers, thinking. "What could it be then? Someone changed our past? Put us onto a track we weren't meant for?"

"A romantic notion."

"A possible one."

"Not really."

"It would be more helpful if you encouraged theorising rather than talking me down," she said, then her tone became wondering again. "Though if someone changed this, us, how can we remember—" Her eyes fixed on him, accusatory. "Sorry, how can  _I_ remember the bits I can?"

"You're drunk, Hermione," Snape said. "You won't even remember  _this_  in the morning."

Hermione didn't  _feel_  drunk anymore. In fact, she felt sober, and present. The music - Indian sitar- was at a low level but hummed in her fingers; her sated stomach weighed heavy in her belly; her brain felt very physical and very real inside her head.

"A witch in a different life," Hermione muttered.

Snape smirked at her again.

 _Not handsome_ , she reminded herself.

"Let's go," she said, and as if by magic, the waiter appeared. "Could we pay, please?" she asked him, jumping to her feet.

"Home already," Snape said. Did he sound disappointed, or was that strange voice hopeful?

"No," Hermione said as she grabbed a hold of her handbag. "I think it's time to go somewhere more public."

She didn't give him time to protest. Instead, she followed the waiter to the register, leaving Snape to stalk through the now-heaving restaurant, alone and exposed. A few heads turned toward them. Hermione thought they would have turned no matter Snape's reputation in Cokeworth — he was an imposing figure, singular and dark, prone to stand out in such a colourful atmosphere. But there was undoubtedly recognition there amongst the residents, a few scattered faces blank with shock.

"It was lovely, thanks," Hermione told the waiter even though he hadn't asked.

The man's eyes flickered between her and Snape. She grinned, and realised it had been weeks since she'd felt compelled to hide her smile behind her hand.

 

* * *

 

Snape wasn't sure how it happened. He had held the door open for her at the curry house; they were being watched, and she refused to go through first. She just stood there, not seeming nearly as pissed as she should have been after three full pints, looking up at him with a crooked eyebrow.

She held out a hand.

"Are you serious?" Snape found himself saying. Looks were deceiving, and so was Hermione's sudden turn to more serious and articulate conversation — she was definitely still drunk.

Her small fingers folded in his long ones, stayed there. She stood up on her tiptoes, in front of everyone (everyone; the entire town was watching them, surely), and gave him the briefest of kisses on the lips before pulling him through the door, the bell jingling after.

She didn't let go when they erupted, with a strange sense of triumph, onto the pavement.

"Hermione—" Snape began, at a further loss for words.

"You don't have to, if you don't want," Hermione said, not letting go.

Snape didn't remove his hand.

"Good," Hermione said. Her smile was slightly wavering, her fingers sweating in his. He rubbed them against his coat and she laughed.

"Where does one go next when they want to be noticed?" she asked. Her face was glowing golden in the streetlight.

They landed in a pub on the high street. If the curry house had been busy, the high street was a rave, with people pouring in and out of pubs and clubs; a group of teenagers gathering in the green, being watched surreptitiously by a gaggle of wary police officers. There was space at the Tudor Rose bar, two people wide, as though just for them.

The barman recognised him. "What do you want?" he asked Snape, his voice unwelcoming, then upon seeing Hermione his eyes widened. She smiled at him again, and Snape realised that, drunk or not, he'd never seen Hermione look so sure of herself, and so much like she was about to set something on fire.

"Your respect, first of all," Hermione said. She flung her debit card onto the bar; it flipped in the air with a stylish flourish. "Secondly, my friend would like a whiskey, and I would like a gin and tonic."

"You sure?" the barman said, his small eyes still flitting between them, half-lidded with disbelief.

"Deadly," Hermione replied.

A break in the crowd appeared at the same time as their drinks, and a booth materialised: a booth, with sticky, welcoming, joined-up seats. Snape followed Hermione, his hands loose at his sides while she carried the drinks, and they arrived just in time for another couple to slide their glasses onto the table.

"Sorry!" the offending woman said. "I—"

She stopped. So did Snape. Hermione and the other man stood there, looking between the two, until Hermione said, "Have we met before?"

The woman ignored her. "Severus," she said curtly to Snape, her fine pointed chin giving a subtle nod. Snape had his hands in his pockets, and found himself clutching hard to his keys as those familiar eyes fixed on him: bottle-green, astonishing even when surrounded by the leaves of a rhododendron. Her hair had darkened in her middle-age but still clung to the remnants of the vibrant red Snape had once found great pleasure in being able to spot in a crowd fifty feet away, once upon a time.

"Hello, Lily," Severus replied, his insides turning to tar.

The man at Lily's side — her husband, Snape knew — muttered something inaudible and shifted from foot to foot.

"I saw you in the news," Lily said. She looked at Hermione — the girl had so many expressions flickering across her face that Snape couldn't identify even one of them in isolation.

Lily's hand flinched, as she was holding back the urge to introduce herself, then said, "It's not true, then."

"Nothing in the news about me is ever true," Snape replied.

A microphone screeched and they all jumped — the band was setting up for the night. Drumsticks clattered and as if woken up, Lily nudged into her husband's side.

"We'll go," Lily said, tugging him away by the hand.

"That's not necessary," Snape said. "We can share, if you wish."

Lily didn't wish. That much was obvious. She looked between Snape, to her husband, to Hermione standing stock-still at Snape's side. Snape looked at Hermione, too; from the set of her jaw, he could tell that she wasn't about to give ground, not tonight — not after the vandalism, and being shoved into a corner at dinner, and the barman who she must have been thinking deserved to have his head stuck in a toilet.

"Hermione," Snape said in a tone of surrender. He waved a half-hearted introduction. "Lily. Lily, Hermione."

"We've met," Hermione said. "At the curry house."

Lily glanced at her, puzzled.

"Takeaway a few weeks ago," Hermione said, an element of offence creeping into her voice. "I asked you if you knew any magic tricks. You lied, by the way."

"We really should be going," Lily's husband said. Snape hated him immediately. It was the voice, mostly, but it didn't help that he was extremely good-looking, suspiciously handsome Aryan-blond with the whitest teeth Severus had ever seen. Snape had spotted him several times before, most often with Lily, out with the children perusing the shops, sometimes at the park when Snape cut through on his way to town. They had never spoken; Snape was surprised to note that the man seemed to recognise him at all. He had thought he would have been erased from Lily's existence and gone missing from her memories — nothing any longer to speak of, nothing to tell, no one to worry about at all.

He sounded like Snape's friends at school, speaking with a received pronunciation that had gone out of fashion two decades ago. He probably owned race horses. Snape hated him even more.

"Do you ever feel you don't belong in the world?" Hermione said to Lily, jerking Snape out of his cyclic, venomous thoughts. "That something isn't quite right? That this isn't the life you're meant to live, or that it's carried on very different from the way it was meant to?"

It could have been a moment of evangelism, a hot-headed sermon from a religious zealot. Lily could have written off the odd questions and laughed as her husband took her by the hand and led her to the door. But instead, her face was shocked, terrified, as she disappeared into the crowd.

Snape stood there. He didn't even know what to say.

"She's like us, you know," Hermione said, studying him coolly as she slid their glasses onto the table. "I could tell, the first time I met her. I didn't realise she was your Lily. Now it makes even more sense."

She sat and scooted over. Snape collapsed into the booth beside her, numb.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I came off a bit strong, I know. It was just that…she was going to leave no matter what, and I wanted to ask. I had to."

"It's fine," Snape ground out.

"It's not," Hermione said. Her hand found his again, her fingers slick with condensation. "Maybe she'll come around. Maybe you can be friends again, and she could help us." She took a sip from Snape's whiskey and made a face. "Yours," she said, sliding it across to him, as if it had been impossible to tell their two drinks apart before.

Snape drank. It tasted of water. He would have to order another.

"Well," he sighed. In a move so foreign it felt as though he was in someone else's body, or that someone else had control of his limbs, he found his arm encircling Hermione's shoulders ( _not Lily_ _'s_ ), his fingers taking a hold of her bicep, pulling her close so her frizzy head settled against the bone of his shoulder. "I suppose," he said, trying to ignore the small breath, the contented sigh that seemed to sweep through both of them, "it could have been worse."

 

* * *

 

Fireworks still burst in the sky on their way home. Red sparks, pink stars, golden Catherine wheels exploding in the smoky darkness. Snape felt brave enough to take her hand when it began to rain, and she still didn't pull away — another small miracle in a night of small miracles. He was wearing the hat she'd given him, pulling it low over his ears, and she refused it when he offered it to her. Her hair tended to keep out the rain, she told him, like sheep's wool.

They didn't speak of Lily again.

Were they that drunk? It was hard to tell. They both felt disembodied, light, floating through the dingy streets of Cokeworth back to Spinner's End. Each of their hands light and ghostly in each other's grasp. Snape was sure that if he were sober, he would have been shaking. Or ran, like he had before under such close contact from this very young woman.

Hermione was certain — terrified — that he was about to wake up and realise she wasn't the woman with red hair and vibrant green eyes that seemed so startlingly and deeply familiar.

They found Snape's door, opened it (the porch light was out; they couldn't see  _PERVERT_  in the dark), and parted to pull off their shoes in the front hall.

"Well." It was Snape, half-way up the stairs, his coat still on. "Good night," he told her. "Stay warm."

"Good night," Hermione replied.

She stood at the foot of the stairs, unmoved.

"Severus?" she said.

Snape stopped three steps down from the top. He looked down at her, dark and unreadable and half-lost in shadow.

"I don't suppose you'd mind…" she began. Her heart hammered so hard she was sure it was shaking the walls, would send the entire house crashing down around them. "…if I spent the night with you?"

They stood in silence; not even a firework cracked outside. It seemed to grow darker, swallowing them up.

There was a creak, a groan of the stairs, a rustle of fabric.

Snape descended a single step.


	18. Miles to Go

A/N: A million apologies again for the time between chapters. The good news is that work is calming down now so I may find myself with a bit more time to write. Always feel free to stop by [Facebook ](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wonk/892286710792872)and nag me - it does work, I promise! Thank you again for your kind reviews and kudos and general wonderfulness. Now, without further ado:

 

**Chapter Eighteen**

_**Miles to Go** _

Hermione had often dreamt about her teeth falling from her mouth — she would cup her palms around her lips and everything from her incisors to her back molars would tumble out onto her fingers. She knew it wasn't uncommon to dream about such a thing; her aunt told her that she had had the same dream before finding out she was pregnant (very little chance of that happening to Hermione, thank God), and her mother said she always used to have it before dental school exams. But they had expressed a sort of fear, a disquiet about it, suggesting very strongly that they would have not liked to have those dreams again. All the while, the only thing dream-Hermione thought when looking down into her cupped hands to find the remains of her teeth was how very nice it would be to be able to buy new ones.

Hermione did not have that dream tonight.

It was a different one, similar and yet not, and so intensely real that when she woke up, she could smell the woodsmoke in the air, and feel the panic and the hurt rush through her, shooting from head to heart. There had been other people there, too, blank faces surrounded by stone. Angry words she couldn't make out. Shouts of frustration and hatred and what sounded like a cry of profanity:  _Densaugeo!,_ and once more Hermione cupped her hands to her mouth, fully expecting that just like the many times before, she would pull back to find her front teeth tucked in the crease of her palm.

But they did not fall out. Instead, they began to grow. They elongated, stretched. They edged down past her lower lip, bit into the curve of her chin, began to build and dip into the hollow of her chest.

She cried out, her mew muffled because she couldn't open and close her mouth, her eyes filling with tears. What could she do? Saw them off, run back to her parents and beg for them to take her into work, haul out the pliers and pull? She tried to cover them but she couldn't — her hands were too small — while all around her, the blank faces mocked her, shouted at her, laughed at her.

Suddenly the laughter ceased. She stepped back, looked up with watery eyes, her hands trying, ineffectively, to shield her teeth from any further abuse. A dark shape materialised before her, the great slick of black that she knew so well. She blinked, three times, and Snape came into focus high above her, looking at her coldly, hatefully, eyes travelling the long distance from her eyes to her nose to the points of her two front teeth.

His voice was cold. It cut her through, an icicle in the heart.

"I see no difference."

Hermione woke with a start.

Snape was still asleep; there was no glow of his eyes in the dark, and his breathing was slow, deep, and even. She had fallen asleep with her forehead pressed to the cool skin of his shoulder, she remembered, but at some point in the night he had turned to face the opposite wall of his tiny bedroom, leaving more than half of the bed for her to stretch out and claim as her own.

 _Bloody bastard_ , she thought intensely, hatefully, wanting to push him from the bed, watch him crumple between the frame and the wall with a shouted oath.

It was stupid, she knew, to let a simple dream affect her so strongly, but it was so  _real_. His voice so exacting, so cruelly precise in its cold calculation. Designed to pierce through her strongest insecurities and tear her fragile, wispy sense of vanity to shreds.

Snape shifted — Hermione panicked that he might wake up — but only nudged his hip firmly against her thigh and continued his undisturbed slumber.

 _He didn_ _'t do it,_ Hermione thought.  _He has never deliberately sought to hurt me_.

Yet the room still smelled of woodsmoke, the old brick house damp like crumbling medieval stone, and Hermione could swear that she heard the hoot of an owl before finally, when the light outside the dingy window began to strike a darkened grey, went back to sleep beside him.

#

She woke up before him, dressed before him, and left the house while he still slept. She was halfway to the shops when she remembered it was New Year's Day and that nothing would be open. Numb with cold and frustration, she found a park and sat herself on the hard, cold ground beneath a sickly rhododendron, and watched as quiet people, remnants of a late nighttime and an early, productive holiday morning, waddled by in their winter coats or last night's short dresses and towering heels.

Her mind only focused on one thing:

 _Snape_.

She was still feeling shaken, run-down (the dreaded cold was truly coming on now, taking hold of her vocal chords and scratching with long, pointed nails), and fuzzy-headed, but not only from last night's drink.

She had slept with Snape.

She would be lying if she said she hadn't thought about it before. Even before she took a hold of him in that hotel in Wiltshire and pulled his face to hers, she had imagined what it would have been like, being with someone who  _knew_  her, understood her, didn't seem to pity her as had her parade of red-headed boyfriends and one-night stands. He was not well-practised; he had said as much before he even let her up the stairs, and that was before the blood rushed to his pale face in terror that he had misunderstood her request. But he hadn't misunderstood, and he led the way to the house's smallest bedroom, his breathing loud, his trim body still huddled in the depths of his black wool coat.

And she was not entirely sure how he would feel about it once he woke to daylight.

What would he do when she returned to Spinner's End? Throw the deadbolt, chuck her out, shout at her through the scratched-up window to go home and never come back? She was now fully aware that they had both been drunk at the time, but Hermione knew she had been the instigator, the one to set it all in motion, and the sludgy feeling of her insides was a strong reminder that one: she wished they both would have been sober, and two: that she felt just a little bit as though she had taken advantage of him. In some stupid way, she was hoping that a bag of groceries and a greasy Full English would take away some of the uncertainty about their encounter and put them back on the same footing as before, but the shops were shut and the local restaurants hadn't even thrown out their doors to welcome in the hungover New Year's revellers.

When Hermione could stand the cold no more, she knocked at the door to Spinner's End.

"Shops are shut," she said before Snape could ask where she'd been. He didn't look worried, or annoyed, only…expressionless.

This was worse than she thought.

Still, he made tea, they had breakfast of dry cornflakes, and neither of them said a thing of the night previous. The day was much the same as the days before, spent in quiet with books, theorising and observations. Hermione sucked on gummy lozenges she found at the bottom of her backpack. Snape didn't chide her when she forgot to cough into her sleeve.

At one point she found herself drawing a cartoon-Hermione in her diary, and Snape leaning close over her shoulder, his breath in her ear and seemingly oblivious of her stiff reaction to his close proximity.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Other Hermione," she replied. Other Hermione had hair just as large, but her two front teeth didn't bite her lower lip like they did in real life. "If there is, or was, another Hermione. I'm listing what we know about me — her, thoughts, feelings, history, et cetera. Things I remember but don't make sense when pieced into my own life. "

"A passable idea," Snape said, and she blushed at the faint praise.

She continued to draw. She wasn't as good as Dean — he was the one who had sketched the unicorn on May 20th and the griffin on June 3rd. But it felt satisfying to vent her frustrations in midnight ink, making the Other Hermione's eyes dark, her lips quirked upward in an expression of knowing.

Beside it, she began her list:

_Other Hermione Granger is:_

_Magical, in some way. In possession of or an instrument of what we might call_ _"magic" and capable of things I am not._

_In love with a boy named Ron, apparently, which would explain the penchant for red hair._

_Knows Severus Snape?_

_Not crazy._

She faltered on that second-to-last line, had almost written _Afraid of Severus Snape_  but decided against it. He did see his name, though, and said, "What do you remember?"

"You made an appearance in a dream," she said. "I don't know if it was real, I mean — I don't know if it's indicative of what we…can't…remember." She pressed hard to the paper and ink bloomed over the "S" in "Snape." "Do you think you had met me?"

"I don't really dream," Snape replied.

She was already drawing him, treating his features much more kindly than she had treated her own.

 _Other Severus Snape_ , she wrote in large letters, with a long and swooping underline.

Then she looked up at him, having no idea what, besides  _Professor?,_ to write beneath it — and even that was with some amount of trepidation, as she was starting to suspect, without anything to prove otherwise, that he ought to be  _her_  professor, which she really did not want to think about right now, not after, not…ever.

Snape looked down at the page, frowning.

"I don't know," he said.

 _Lily Evans,_ Hermione wrote beneath his name, and Snape made a noise deep in his throat, but didn't protest at its addition.

"An aversion to snakes," Snape admitted, and Hermione inked that in beneath Lily's name, as well as  _Deer_ and  _Faithless House?_

After a few more moments of waiting, Snape sighed and said, "Sometimes I think that this world is even kinder to me than it would have been, if I were in a world of magic."

"Why?" Hermione said, her quill still poised over the line, at a loss for what to write.

"I don't think," Snape said, "it would have made things better."

She tapped the nib against the paper; ink spread out into the margin.

"You don't believe me," he said.

"I don't know," she admitted.

"If Other Severus Snape—" His voice was wry, a bit embittered. "—was still born to the same father, I doubt his childhood would have been any better than mine."

"Maybe you would have made better friends," Hermione said, trying to dampen her frustration.  _He_  had been the one who had seemed so hungry for it, once that initial hesitancy was gone. He was the one who, when she groped for a word to call that sense of _something else_ , had been so quick to suggest  _Power_. "And not gone to prison," Hermione continued, "and had a successful and fulfilling career."

She was sure there was more to write, but there was nothing else he wanted to give her. She jotted down a few of their  _What has happened to us?_  theories (all of which seemed silly): elaborate memory loss and conspiracy, time travel, and (Snape had laughed so hard at the suggestion) clones.  _Collective madness_ made the list, but only at the very bottom. After, she scribbled in a quick list of objects: money, as it still struck her as odd that Snape seemed so unfamiliar with British currency when he had lived in England his entire life; wands, as Snape's tale of Lily's Christmas gift had struck a note of accord in her head; and  _familiars_. Crookshanks. Snape had brought up the cat before, had told her that he thought Crookshanks ought to have been not only not female, but dead of old age by now. Perhaps, he suggested (more gently, once she was done raging over the idea that her beloved pet was meant to be buried), that Other Hermione had also had a Crookshanks, but that Crookshanks had been male. It seemed stupid, but Hermione wrote it down anyway; Crookshanks, the fluff-brained, flat-faced cat who had a habit of misjudging the distance between the kitchen table and counter top, was definitely not in possession of anything resembling magic — or brains, for that matter. Though she supposed she didn't have to be, if she was only an impression of the Other Hermione's life, not the Real Hermione's.

Whoever Real Hermione was.

Snape had gone back to his reading, and Hermione almost picked up Bathilda Bagshot's thick book once more, but instead turned a page in her diary and drew a pair of eyes. She didn't have green ink, but she drafted them as accurately as she could: their almond shape, their startling familiarity, instantly recognisable even though she'd met the woman only twice in her life.

 _Other Lily Evans_ , she wrote above the inky stare, then beneath it, when she was absolutely sure that Snape was engrossed in his own work, unshakable from his concentration, she wrote,  _Murdered._

#

Hermione didn't expect Snape to invite her into his room that night. They had spent the day in the comfortable, familiar agreement of not-talking-about-their-feelings, and no mention of sex had entered into any of their conversations. So she was surprised when, with the fire dying low and the old rotting clock on the mantle striking midnight, Snape shoved his books and tea aside and asked her if she was ready to come to bed.

"Oh. Oh!" Hermione said, while Snape's eyes grew wide.

"You don't have to if you don't want to," Snape said. "Obviously."

"No," Hermione rushed to correct him. "No. I want to."

After, in the moments between when their breathing had slowed and before they settled into a hopeful, dreamless sleep, Hermione said, "It's like a very good book."

There was a bit of rustling in the dark, and the duvet slipped down their shoulders as Snape turned, edging round to face her.

"What do you mean?" he said. He was fidgeting, grasping the sheets in his hands. A nervous habit she hadn't noticed when they were only sharing a room. Had he hidden his discomfort before, or was it only because she was in bed with him?

"The things I remember," she said. "The dreams, and the feelings. Unreal, but…not. Not always good. But always tinged with the disappointment that someday the story will end."

He didn't say anything in reply; instead, he sank back down into the pillow, the crown of his head pressing into it, bending the headboard.

"Do you ever feel like that?" Hermione said. "I know you had…the deer. And something happened to both of us at Faithless House. But what part of Other Snape is the book you don't want to put down?"

"You're mixing your metaphors," Snape grumbled.

"No I'm not. You just want me to be quiet." She reached out and placed a tentative hand on his side, pulling his hip back, edging her toes against his calf. Their intimacy still felt fragile, at risk of breaking with one wrong word or ill-thought-out grope in the dark. She kept the joint of her wrist loose, the pads of he fingers soft against a jutting rib bone.

He didn't protest, but his answer was not the one she was looking for.

"Lily Evans," he said at last. His voice was dry, a whisper, his body still beneath her hand as though his heart had stopped beating, his blood stopped rushing beneath his skin. "The rightest thing in my life."

"Lily Evans," Hermione repeated.

 _Of course, Lily Evans_.

"You asked," Snape said. He didn't sound sorry.

"I know," Hermione said, and she tried to stifle the pang struck by not only the answer, but also by the fact that she had known what it would be, the exact name to pass his lips before he could even think to say it aloud.

#

Hermione was acting odd. Snape supposed she often acted odd, and the cold most likely didn't help matters, but he imagined she wasn't a very good liar, and sneezing and coughing and blowing her nose couldn't account for the way she stopped meeting his eyes after the third night they'd slept together. Had it been that bad? She hadn't protested. She had even been the one to suggest it — thank God. He knew it was strange, their…togetherness. The relatively sudden leap from strained friendship to his creaking, narrow bed. She remained cheerful despite the cold (and despite the fact that she woke up alone on the second of January, because he couldn't sleep with her snoring)…but there was something hidden there, something wrong in the way she spoke to him when she came back from the shops with a jug of milk for tea the day after New Year's.

"You should have let me go," Snape told her as she pulled open the fridge door with unnecessary force, flung the plastic jug into the empty door, and slammed it shut again. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing," she grunted. She didn't meet his eyes, and instead fled into the hall and raced up the stairs, the floor above his head creaking and settling as she threw herself into his bed. He stood for a moment, his hand on the refrigerator to try to still it on its uneven feet, and wondering if the thunk of his bedposts on the floor was an invitation, but her hacking cough from upstairs had him settling into the sitting room sofa with one of Hermione's stolen library books instead.

"I bought train tickets," she said when she came down a few hours later, when Snape had just started to cook dinner (beans on toast). She sniffed hard. "Tomorrow morning at half nine."

Did she sound angry, or was that just the congestion? "Thank you," Snape said, feeling irritated for some reason as he decanted half of the beans onto a piece of white bread.

"That will get us most of the way. Bus and taxi for the rest."

"Mm." He held out her plate. She took it.

She didn't move. Lifted her plate in both hands, as if in thanks, then said, "When did you get your tattoo?"

Snape started, but very carefully didn't meet her gaze as he served up his own meal. "Would you believe me if I said prison?"

"Not unless you were in with a very talented tattoo artist," Hermione replied. She set her plate aside, then, without asking permission, took a hold of his hand. She worked her small fingers up the bones of his thumb, past the knuckles and the ticklish crook, the wrist — shoved up his sleeve until it settled, protesting, around his elbow.

It was faded, but it was there — and still stung sometimes, though Snape knew he only imagined it. Hermione drew her nails along the inside of his forearm, tracing the stylised wings, the hooked beak, dipping her finger into the beady dot of an eye.

"A crow?" she asked.

"A raven," he said, inhaling sharply as she took a hold of his elbow with her other hand and drew her fingers down the sinews of his arm. She smelled strongly of essential oils — menthol, tea tree — and sounded better than she had that afternoon, her voice clearing, the sniffing no longer so incessant.

"School?" she said. Finally, her eyes met his. They were no longer watery, were instead clear and honest and bright, with no hint of her earlier oddness at all.

"My friends and I had a fondness for Poe."

"Mopey bastard," Hermione said, smiling.

"Quite."

"You know," Hermione said, plucking at one of his buttons, pulling loose a thread, "I happen to like the Corvidae. Misunderstood creatures."

"Much like my schoolmates," Snape replied bitterly.

Hermione frowned. "Have you ever thought of getting rid of it?" she asked. She began to roll his sleeve back down to his wrist, unfurling the fabric (for some reason the movement reminded him of condoms). With a pat, she stuffed her hands in her pockets, and Snape found himself missing the feel of her warm hands on his cool skin. The past two nights, upstairs (never downstairs, never anywhere else other than his bed, at night, when you could only see by the dying streetlight through the thin curtains), she had taken to seeking out his scars, the pearly welts slightly raised beneath her fingertips. It felt oddly patriotic, her lips upon his back, his arms, the odd puckering on his neck from the night a few local yobs found a pellet gun. Respectful, like he was a soldier returned home from war. She had treated the marks of his turbulent childhood with such reverence, with such sad understanding, but now her eyes, fixed on the cotton of his sleeve above the raven tattoo, were alight with fury. "You can do that now," Hermione said. "With lasers."

"I haven't had the funds," Snape said. He quickly buttoned his cuff.

"Of course," Hermione said, embarrassed now. She backed way, grabbed her plate from the counter top. "Sorry."

"Sorry," Snape also apologised, without being quite certain why.

They ate their beans on toast standing in the kitchen, leaning against cabinets opposite each other and in another strange, thick, companionable silence. He watched her but she didn't watch him - she was instead frowning at the wall, obviously thinking of something far, far away from this dingy kitchen, away from him. When they finished, they moved back into the sitting room but still sat in their separate places, expressing no affection or attachment, paying little attention to their books and instead losing themselves in thought and the popping and flaring of the fire.

Snape had always hated this house. He had had no reason to feel any fondness for it, considering his history — he had considered selling it once upon a time but knew he couldn't afford the renovations, and the as-is sale price would have only secured him a rundown home much smaller. It was his, and he made do, but he had never enjoyed his life here.

And yet, right now, he was feeling as though he would be slightly reluctant to leave in the morning.

Hermione went up to bed before him, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

"Good night," she wished him.

"Sleep well," he told her, but she had already disappeared into the front hall. She didn't stir when he went up to join her twenty minutes later, shimmying beneath the duvet.

 _Is this real?_  was his last thought before he fell to sleep beside her.

She was the one who woke him in the morning. She either hadn't snored or he hadn't heard it, and her eyes were frantic, "I overslept!" she said.

Snape shot up in bed. His alarm clock's tiny hands announced the time quite clearly in the morning light: eight fifty-five A.M.

She flung him his bag and shouldered hers.

"Shoes on, let's go."

Her legs were shorter than his — she half-ran, he walked, and they made their train, but only barely. Huffing, they found a pair of empty seats, and Snape settled his bag into his while Hermione collapsed against the window,  _A-Z_  in hand.

She smiled. Her eyes were knowing. "We made it."

"Indeed," he said. He settled in next to her, still trying to focus his eyes. The man across from them rattled his newspaper, cleared his throat, obviously willing them to be quiet.

"There's porridge in your bag," Hermione whispered.

There was, sealed in a plastic bag and nestled in a bowl, exactly as she had planned it. Snape threw it onto the table and stifled a yawn, while Hermione sat, looking out at the increasingly blurred scenery, sitting up very straight and not looking tired at all.

That's when he felt it — something else that hadn't been there before, something else she had slipped in whilst he was sleeping. Tucked into the side, between his jumper and a pair of trousers: a thin box covered in balding velvet.

"Hermione—" he began, but she was ignoring him, flipping through the pages of the road atlas, lost in yellow lines, blue lochs, thick green forest.

He drew the box out and lifted the lid a few millimetres, knowing exactly what he would find inside - the white rubber-capped end of an old child's toy, the paint flaking even though it had never been used for magic or otherwise, the hollow at one end of the box absent of its deck of cards - and stuffed it back into his bag. All the while, Hermione was lost in the Highlands, her fingers following the train line, racing away toward the two twin stars on their map.


	19. Torchmeadh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks again with your patience for my increasingly spaced-out chapters. There should be a total of 27 chapters, so eight more to go. Hopefully we'll finish by Christmas (though I'm aiming for much sooner)! Hope you're all well.

**Chapter Nineteen**

**_Torcmeadh_ **

****

****

There was snow on the ground from Newcastle, and Hermione’s legs had fallen asleep somewhere near York. Out the window (at least, in the few brief hours of daylight they had), the countryside looked battered, sticks and branches scattered across the sides of the railway tracks. Had there been a storm? She had been too wrapped up in herself (and her studies…and Snape, if she were completely honest) to notice. Perhaps it hadn’t come south into Cokeworth. Perhaps she wouldn’t have cared if it had. It was much warmer in that house, sharing a bed with somebody else.

Snape was reading. She pressed her thigh against his. He didn’t flinch away, nor did he acknowledge her presence at all.

She rested her head against the point of his shoulder and closed her eyes, feeling his ribcage expand, contract in a sigh.

He woke her up to change trains in Edinburgh. They bought bitter tea at the cafe and sat on a chilly metal bench, watching people rush past on the way to business meetings and post-holiday shopping in an odd mixture of business suits and puffy coats.

“I can’t understand anything anyone is saying,” Hermione said sleepily, holding the cup to her mouth, feeling the steam condense on her lips.

Snape — well, he didn’t laugh, exactly (she was learning it was a rare feat, to make him actually, truly laugh) — but he certainly made a noise that sounded somewhat like a “heh.”

“Have you ever been to Scotland?” he asked.

“On a ski holiday,” Hermione replied. “When I was eight.”

“You don’t have an ear for dialects, then,” Snape said. He sounded disappointed.

“Not when I haven’t been afforded the opportunity. I thought the Edinburgh accent was meant to be easy to understand?”

“It is,” Snape said. “We’re at a train station, remember. A crowded one. And the people here aren’t necessarily from Edinburgh.”

“I’m not used to being so hopeless,” Hermione said. For some reason, the words stuck in her throat, a little niggle of doubt creeping in, a crisis of confidence. The un-understandable people spiralling by her. Was this right? Were the spots on the map right? She couldn’t even understand a different accent in her own language — and yet somewhere in the depths of Scotland sat a place that was apparently so important in that missing part of her life. Theoretically.

Snape draped a careful arm around her shoulders. Brought her head to rest against his collarbone. It was more comfortable when he was wearing his coat.

Hermione tried to relax but couldn’t. He let go.

“Reserve your hesitation for when we arrive,” he said, draining the rest of his tea. “And be thankful we’re not going to Glasgow.”

She groaned and took his tea cup, remembered there weren’t any bins, and sat there stupidly for a moment. Then, she said, “Do you understand them?”

“Of course,” he said.

“How?”

“Boarding school,” he replied. “Children came from all over.”

“Oh,” Hermione said. The Tannoy chimed — their train had arrived. She stood, rucksack on, an empty cup in both hands. Stopped short.

“Oh,” she repeated.

#

Night had fallen long before they arrived. Hermione didn’t know it was humanly possible to spend so much time on a train, her knees jammed up against the tray table in front of her that refused to clip back into place. In an unusual show of self-sacrifice, Snape offered to trade seats with her, but she refused and stubbornly plopped her bloody book down on the tray table, intent on finally finishing it.

She did it. She finally did it. It was a surprising end, like Bagshot had stopped paying attention after the 1600s and threw in the future of witchcraft in Britain as an afterthought — like someone had bullied her into acknowledging the existence of Wicca and Paganism at all. It seemed to end mid-thought; Hermione had turned the page, expecting at least another five hundred words, but there was nothing except the list of references and an acknowledgement that thanked only her publisher, a small independent press in Cardiff. Hermione had looked them up over the Christmas holidays — they were no longer in business.

“Anything useful?” Snape asked. He had been watching her read the final few pages; she had tried to ignore the way he seemed to study her face, reading her expressions, trying to glean from her anything of consequence he should know.

“I don’t know,” Hermione said. She sat back, stretched her arms, and peered through the dark window: nothing, as usual, except the travelling trapezoids of white where the light from their windows reflected on the snow. “I need to think about it.”

“Then think,” he told her.

She obeyed. She spent the remainder of the journey somewhere else, her eyes fixed on the glowing white outside the window, her brain seeing nothing but pages, words, the smell of a dusty old library book gone yellow at the edges. Still, her mind took her nowhere. It felt worn-down, overused, at risk of rattling apart into gears and cogs and rusted springs.

“Not too hard,” Snape added, smirking, and she allowed him a smile.

His fingers slid over her hand, ever so briefly, before he drew his arm back into his lap.

It was bitterly cold when they disembarked onto a rickety village platform. Snow was thick on the ground, battered branches sticking haphazardly out of banks and leaves littered across rooftops. “Been a storm,” a dotty old man said to them as he got off the train behind them. “Not over yet. Batten down the hatches and make sure you wrap your pretty selves up warm.”

“Er, thanks,” Hermione said as the man hobbled away on his stick.

She and Snape exchanged glances.

“Don’t look at me,” he said. “No one ever talks to me unless they’re forced to.”

Hermione hooked a hand through his arm. “And in London people get punched for talking on the Tube.”

That might have been a smile. It was difficult to tell.

“Welcome to Scotland,” he said.

“Yes,” Hermione agreed wryly. “Welcome.”

#

There had never been a more agonising decision than The World’s End landlord asking them if they wanted a double room. They must have stood there for a full three minutes, exchanging glances and pauses and hushed words before finally agreeing, yes, they thought they would. Would that be possible? Not a problem if not. Just let them know.

When they finally got upstairs with their bags, the old, groaning door doing its best to shut out the quiet racket of the quiet country pub, Hermione felt shy for the first time in her life. Somehow…bridal. It was stupid, ridiculous even. She was not some virginal bride, and Snape was certainly not any sort of lovestruck groom.

She blamed her tired brain. It was starting to confuse Bagshot’s folktales with real life.

She sat on the edge of the double bed, blindly watching Snape turn up the radiators to full (it was cold in there, but still warmer than Spinner’s End) then unbotton his coat and drape it over the back of the upholstered chair. He undid the top button of his shirt, also. Hermione had always spent so little time considering the way he dressed, dismissing it as unimportant, but it was surprising, his formality. He had no reason to dress nicely (even if the clothes weren’t tailored just so, nor at all new),  unless he did it for her (doubtful), or if it was just because that was the way he was. Or had been, before.

(Was ‘before’ even the right word?)

“Do you want to go out tonight?” she asked, still in her coat and boots and feeling too self-conscious to start taking them off.

“It’s late,” Snape replied, undoing the button on his cuff.

“I know, but we could at least look around. Perhaps we’d be more likely to recognise something at night.”

“Doubtful.”

“Come on,” Hermione said, then forced the plea out of her voice. “I want to ask someone about the map, anyway. There’s nothing under the star, and I couldn’t find anything online about another village or a—”

“Fine,” Snape sighed, doing up the button on his shirt again. He looked at the bed forlornly for a moment then threw back on his wool coat.

Hermione smiled at him, one eyebrow raised. “Don’t forget your hat.”

They ordered mulled wine from the bar and sneaked it out into the garden, then the street, sipping from the steaming glasses as they walked on together, arm-in-arm. It was a cozy night still, despite what the old man had said. Hermione was glad that Snape was, for once, willing to share his space, as once again she was finding herself inadequately prepared for the weather, her ever-increasing layers still not fully blocking out the chill and her nose threatening to run in the cold. The hot spiced wine in one hand and Snape’s arm in the other were the only things that kept her from climbing the stairs back to their room, crawling into bed, and waiting for Spring.

Or taking the next train back to London.

“You’re very warm,” Hermione told him as they passed shut antique shops, charity shops, lingering at the windows, peering inside to see as much as the quaint street lamps would allow. “Are you always this warm?”

Perhaps the wine was starting to go to her head. Her stomach rumbled — she realised she hadn’t had dinner yet. That would explain the slightly light feeling in her feet, her hot face, and how she kept having to stifle the most ill-timed giggles (when Snape tripped over a soda bottle, again when he stumbled backwards at a bat exploding from a tree).

“I certainly don’t feel it,” he replied. He set their glasses down on a bus stop bench. “Cold bones.”

“Stone heart,” Hermione said gravely, then giggled again.

Snape sighed.

“Did Lily ever feel the same way about you?” she asked suddenly, and he stopped. They were out of reach of the nearest streetlamp, just on the edge of the village where the line of snow-covered cars had stopped and the icy road started to become slippery on its way uphill.

“Hermione…” Snape warned, his voice deliciously deep.

“I mean, I know she cared for you. You were friends for so long. But…she married someone else. She seems happy and…” She almost said _alive_ but thought better of it. “…content in the life she’s built.  Don’t you want her to be happy?”

Snape didn’t answer. In the distance, from behind the hill, an owl hooted.

“You know you do,” Hermione said gently.

His arm tightened almost painfully in hers.

They continued up the hill in silence, footsteps making gentle crunching noises in the snow. There were so few footprints — the village high street was packed down under traffic, foot and car, whilst it looked like she and Snape would be the only people to climb the hill since snowfall. There wasn’t even a scattering of paw prints.

“There’s not anything up here,” Snape said, increasingly grumpy. “Just an old cottage.”

“How can you even tell,” Hermione said, squinting through the darkness. She tilted the torchlight of her mobile phone up, illuminating the front of the house a dim blue. Though truly she could only suppose it was a house — it was difficult to tell with the front nearly swallowed in brambles, boarded-up windows long battered in and tangled in bare ivy, what once might have been a chimney half collapsed into a pile of bricks at the side, half-buried in snow. She walked around a corner, catching her trouser cuff on a thorn and wrenching it free. “Do you suppose there’s a way in?”

“No, Hermione,” Snape said.

“Why not?” she asked.

His white hand lifted, a long finger pointing at the sign that Hermione had seen, but ignored: _DANGEROUS BUILDING: RISK OF DEATH._

“A bit over-dramatic,” Hermione said.

“You’re drunk,” Snape said. His voice sounded strange, a bit strangled. “And it’s dark. Let’s go back to the pub.”

“I’m not tired,” Hermione said, but she let him retake her arm anyway and gently steer her back down the hill,  trying to keep her from slipping in the snow.

They were halfway down when she stopped, nearly slipping along with Snape as he carried on walking without her.

“Look,” she said, turning her torch on the retaining wall, where beyond it a sign stood to mark a path made invisible by the snow. “A footpath.”

Indeed it was, marked by an old wooden post leaning over, battered by weather and wind. Her phone just managed to illuminate the worn lettering: CASTLE.

“On the map,” Hermione said. “That’s the right direction, isn’t it? That’s where the other star is.”

“A castle,” Snape said. He sounded incredulous.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Let’s go,” she said, taking an unsteady step forward, but he dragged her back, her shoes sliding slightly in the snow.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

“Do you promise?” she asked, foolish, childish, not caring.

“Yes,” he replied darkly.

Her mobile landed on the ground, buried itself an inch deep in the snow. She didn’t let him take another step. Instead, she swung him around by his hand, looped him back toward her, took her own unsteady step forward, and put a gloved hand each side of his face, her fingertips tucking beneath the brim of his hand-knitted hat. She could barely see him in the dark but she could feel his cheeks beneath the fabric of her gloves, the coarse hairs catching the wool.

His hands caught her waist. For a moment she was sure he was going to push her away, but he didn’t. Instead, they just sat there, with little pressure, only a warm, large presence at each of her sides.

“Thank you,” Hermione said, looking up into the black pits where his eyes should have been, her thumbs tracing the lines from his hooked nose to the corners of his mouth.

“For what?” he asked. His breath was sweet, spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves.

“For being here,” she said, her mind enveloped in, fixed on the distance between his lips and hers. “So I don’t have to do this alone.”


	20. Ruins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your patience in waiting for this chapter. These last chapters are taking me longer than normal, especially as I'm finding myself thinking about them about ten times more than actually writing about them and hoping I can do the story justice. 
> 
> I've also had a little side project while working on this one: an addition to my head-canon of Neville Longbottom, found in my short story [Firewhisky](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4444451/chapters/10097240). Please check it out--Neville needs more love!
> 
> Now without further ado: Chapter Twenty.

**Chapter Twenty**

**_Ruins_ **

 

Hermione had just squirmed out of the grasp of death — that’s how she felt when she woke early the next morning. She was naked and sweaty and too hot, and the light out the window behind the curtains was grey, steely and unkind. Snape was there too — she checked, reaching out until she grabbed a fistful of hair and he groaned and she let go.

He was too hot, too. She pushed down the covers and took a deep breath. The air was fire in her throat. She coughed once, twice, then went into a glorious hacking fit that finally woke Snape from the dead as well.

He looked at her with one eye, his hair clinging, sticky, to one side of his face.

"Shall I get you some water?" he suggested, half-asleep, whilst Hermione finally ceased coughing and fell back onto her pillows with a groan.

"I thought I was over this."

"Calm before the storm," Snape sighed. He pushed the covers back as well, and Hermione glimpsed the glow of pale silver skin — usually so interesting, intriguing, but now seemed too bright, too eager to make her head hurt — as he padded into the bathroom and returned with a coffee mug of tepid water. She took it thankfully but without a word, and Snape felt her forehead with the back of his palm like a worried mother…who didn't necessarily look at all worried.

"It's my house," he said. "It was bound to make you ill eventually. I apologise sincerely."

Hermione coughed again and sipped her water. It hurt going down.

"You should stay in bed," he said.

"No!" Hermione rasped. "I want to go…to the castle."

"It's cold out," he said. "And it's going to start raining. We need to keep you warm."

"I'll be fine," Hermione protested, worming up, the covers falling down to her waist, but Snape's hands fastened on her shoulders and he pressed her back down to the bed.

"Let me guess," he said, hovering over her, his face very close to hers, his black eyes bottomless. He was going a bit blurry; trying to sit up had made her head spin, his face a fresh painting left to run. "Never missed a day of school?"

Hermione scowled, trying to focus. "Until a certain point." She coughed pathetically. "I need to call my mum and tell her I'm okay."

"Sleep first," Snape said. His lips thinned and he let her go, but not before planting a very carefully considered kiss on her cheek, just an inch from the corner of her mouth. "And stay," he told her firmly as he pulled on his trousers. "If I see you walking around Hogsmeade there will be hell to pay."

"Hogsmeade?" Hermione said weakly.

"Torcmeadh," Snape said, looking at her as though she'd gone mad, and bent to press one more kiss on her lips, demanding and selfish and apparently completely unconcerned about germs. " _Stay_ ," he said again, his hand on the door. His look dared her to disobey.

The door swung open, the window sucking in, blowing out on a gust of wind. Then one slam, several fading footsteps, and he was gone.

 

* * *

 

Torchmeadh looked little more alive by day. Several houses and shops were shuttered up, some windows boarded from where they'd undoubtedly blown out in the storm. "Another one comin'," the pub landlord had told him over cooked breakfast (Snape had nearly forgotten to ask for something to be sent up to their room for Hermione). "Brace yourselves. It's goin' to be a bumpy one."

The sweet shop was open, but he didn't go in at risk of spending his little pocket money on things he neither needed nor wanted and that Hermione was too ill to consume. But the charity shop looked appropriately dim-lit and dire, and the grumpy woman at the till only stared at him as he walked through the door. Didn't even say hello.

There was an unusual abundance of tartan: reds and greens and greenish yellows lining the railings, taking up more space than it should have any right to. The bookshelves groaned with bric-a-brac and ceramic cats and gold-gilded china lined the cavities in the old, thick walls. Costume jewellery hung from hooks near the register, and it wasn't until Snape was standing there, fiddling with the necklaces, that the woman looked up from her book and stared at him with bloodshot eyes.

"How much?" Snape asked.

"It's marked," the woman said, and turned back a page.

It was all ugly, the jewellery, but Snape didn't care. He couldn't help but think of all those gifts from Lily — the wand that Hermione had dared to stow away in his bag, the bags of sweets and books gift-wrapped in shining paper and shoved beneath his bed so his parents didn't find them — and felt that familiar stab of guilt at having never been able to return her kindness. It did not come easily to him, thinking of others. Not since _her_.

But now she was here.

Well, there.

Naked, in his bed.

He found the least ugly necklace, a black stone knotted on a leather cord. It was 99p and he had a pound hanging heavily in his pocket, begging to be spent.

"Keep the change," Snape told the woman on the till, as though she hadn't already pocketed the remaining penny.

 

* * *

 

It was lonely without Hermione, and Snape's mind felt more delicate than usual, chasing odd questions and answers without company as he walked the footpath from the hill into the woods, his feet squelching in the mud. Nearly losing his shoe in a mire by a tumble-down stile. He trudged on, eyes downcast, his mood blackened, lost, and yet….

As the fallow fields drifted away into wind and splattering rain, and he began to journey into the woods, he slowly realised that this wasn't a wood; it was a forest. Deep and thick and dark as none he had seen in England — the trees weren't those of spindly plantations, but high and close and refusing to let the grey light of day through the branches. And it kept going. Brambles catching at his coat, rustles in the leaves, something following him in the dark — foxes, birds, long-legged spiders, the silence of a watching deer….

He was soaked by the time he saw sunlight again. Half-covered in mud, somewhat out of breath, but his mood had lightened and he no longer cared. He felt odd. Humming. Like he was being pulled along by a wire, hooked right behind his belly button.

As he reached the edge, more and more light breaking through, blinding him, the gnarled root of an old willow tree found his feet and he stumbled into the open, into a soggy field of clumping weeds.  He swore, looked up.  Up to where a craggy ruin sat on the hillside, menacing and grey and feeling like….

"Severus?" a voice said, a dream-like whisper drifting from the trees.

For some reason he didn't turn to look. Only stood there, the voice wafting into his ears, wrapping around his senses. Suddenly he could smell springtime, see bright sunlight, waving banners, hear a raucous cheer.

He turned to look behind him, through the speckled darkness of the forest. There was nothing there. Only the woody bog.

It was starting to rain again. He turned up his collar, suppressed a shiver, and pressed on.

 

* * *

 

 

"You look like you should be goin' back up to bed," said the barman as Hermione sat down at one of the many empty tables, her bones and muscles protesting every inch of contact against the seat. She had intended to brave the outdoors, to rush to catch up with Snape, follow at enough of a distance that when she catapulted into him, they'd be too far away from Torcmeadh to warrant going back to their room.

But there would be no catapulting. Hermione couldn't even manage to get to the front door of the pub.

"I'm fine," Hermione rasped. She was far too run-down to be pleased about being able to understand his accent, but was at least grateful. "May I have some lemonade please?"

"It's ten in the morning," the barman said.

"I know," Hermione croaked out.

He returned a few minutes later with a lemonade and a stern expression, as though he were the very picture of health and a sugar-free lifestyle. It reminded her of her mother. She really _did_ need to call her.

"Is there an internet connection somewhere in the village?" Hermione asked (a few times, before her voice stopped catching).

"Library down the way," the barman said. "Has a computer, I think."

"Is it open?"

The man shrugged and disappeared into the back.

It took Hermione a strangely short amount of time to find it — she hobbled straight there, without having asked where it was. It wasn't open until half-past, so she leaned against the door, hugging her jumper to herself and trying to summon the energy to go back to the pub for her coat but finding herself unable. A few minutes later a woman appeared — the librarian was so surprised to see her she dropped her keys.

"Goodness!" she said, like she was unused to meeting strangers. "'Morning."

"'Morning," Hermione eked out, and the woman noticeably recoiled. Hermione felt like a pubescent boy, only contagious. "Do you have a computer with internet I can use?" she asked.

"Sometimes," the woman sighed. "Maybe we'll be lucky today." She fiddled hard with the key in the lock, pulled in, and finally pushed it open. Her drooping eyes set on Hermione. "Well, in you go."

Hermione instantly felt like she owed the woman a favour, but did as she was bid, and shuffled into the dim village library and single reading room, where a decrepit computer was shoved in a corner.

"Password's 'hello,'" the librarian said, pumping a bottle of hand sanitiser on the check-out desk. "Let me know if you need any help."

Hermione stared at the monitor for a few moments before her eyes focused enough to centre the pointer on the screen. She had just inputted the suggested password when the librarian piped up, "What're you doing?"

Hermione started. "Sorry?"

"Up here," she said. "On my computer."

"Er—"

"It's just we don't get many people from the south, especially not any young ones. And with the storm we just had—"

"I've heard it was—" she coughed "—excuse me…I heard it was bad."

"Terrible," the woman said, and Hermione fidgeted with the keyboard, trying to remember what she'd even come here for. "Never heard such terrible blowing in my life. Supposed to come back with a vengeance as well, later this week."

"Hm," Hermione said, and turned her attention back to the screen. It was blinking furiously in and out of focus, and her eyes were burning, angry.

"Any luck?" the librarian said.

ASK JEEVES appeared on the monitor.

"Yes," Hermione said.

Finally the librarian opened a book, leaving Hermione to try and remember what she was meant to be doing in peace. She bounced her fingers on the keyboard for a few seconds, gnawing at her lip, then it popped up before she realised she'd typed in the address: the milky greens, the Christmas-red, the eye-hurting clash of colours that announced that while her world had tilted, Myth and Magic of the British Isles had stayed the same.

She had a message.

Subject: _The Three Brothers_

From: _WestHamFan_

 _Hi,_ it said. _I think I might be able to help you._

 

* * *

 

 

Each footstep felt familiar, right, like he'd set foot on these stones before, formed his own grooves in their surface. "You see," Hermione would have said breathlessly (perhaps even more breathlessly, considering her recent trouble breathing) if she were here. "Whatever it is…the rightness of it. It _wants_ to be found."

Snape still didn't know what on earth _it_ was, despite her names for it (magic, madness, a dream-state he couldn't wake from) but still, if she were beside him, he might have put an arm around her shoulders. Breathed a shaky breath. Drawn her close. He wasn't even sure if it was her he wanted, or just someone else. Someone who understood. Something that wouldn't leave him here, feeling so utterly bewildered by the fact that the tower above him, high and grey and missing its roof, tilted to the right in a very expected way.

 _It wasn't there_ , Hermione had said after her search for the Burrow. She had been so despondent, nearly unreachable, only a little bit buoyed by Snape's odd talking-round, his implications that there was something else she was missing (where did that name come from in his head, then: _Weasley_? Had he invented it entirely?). It was easy to do, drawing conclusions and playing with words; it was harder to admit that the star on their map, their shared delusion, had led him straight to the foot of this castle, walking the steps up into the gaping entrance like he'd been here a thousand times before.

The roof was gone entirely. Birds nested in the hollowed out spaces, fluttering about as clouds rolled in above his head, dark and heavy. Any other day he would have wished he'd brought an umbrella, but today he didn't care. Let the heavens open. He would stay.

He _could_ stay. Feast from berries in the forest, filter water from the lake. He'd be dead of exposure by February, but it was better than suffering a fall at Spinner's End, only to be found three weeks later when the neighbours reported a bad smell to the police.

A pigeon cooed above his head, ruffled among the deadened ivy. His fingers grazed the dusty stone walls. The place was enormous, and so well-preserved. The entryway was host to what had once been a great stairway, but which now went nowhere except into a patch of sky fifteen feet above the ground, half of its steps sagged away. Arches still leaned into each other for support, and the walls of what had once been a great room hemmed in fine lawn of green grass.

 When he'd seen it on the footpath sign, he'd expected a grassy mound, or a few stones standing on end, claiming to be a mighty fortress. But there was this instead. And no pay-to-access booth, not even a plaque telling him what it was, what it had once been.

He heard it again but it wasn't behind him, was beneath him instead, coming up through the stones beneath his feet: the whisper of his name, _Severus_. His footsteps were slow, steady, slippery in the moss and mud. A fat raindrop slid down his cheek and rested on his lips. He touched it with his tongue; it tasted of copper, of flame. He closed his eyes for a moment, felt like he might topple backward, and then opened them again to a flare of light, a fading shadow.

A wisp of white and pearly grey.

The mist curled in on itself, thickened, and dissipated, drifted past him as if on a swift and sudden breeze. Dead leaves followed it, and so did Snape, back through the hall, around the stairs. Stepping over a dead rabbit, thick branches fallen from nowhere, stones and rubble and no litter, as if no living person had ever been here before. But he wouldn't have noticed if the place had been scattered with empty cans of Red Bull and Coke — all he could see was the mist, the white flash of light that went around a corner, up a step, and disappeared.

Snape leant into a recess, listening to the rapid, rough sound of his breathing. He came back to himself for a moment, wondering what was going on. It was like the deer all over again, except not. It was not solid this time, not _real,_ and yet he was, following it, twisting throughout these ruins, walking them as though he'd never stopped, belonged here, had never left.

 _Severus_ ….

He was ascending, walking so many steps, should have been out of breath but wasn't. He wasn't even sure how he'd ended up here, because he was fairly certain that no existing steps went up this high, but if he dared to look out the arrowslit he would see how far he had come, and how far below the fields, the lake, the forest were. He didn't however, because he was still rising, his fingers reaching out to grab a hold of the silver mist, the drifting shadow of crimson, curl it around his fingers.

The steps ended. He stopped, breathing hard. The mist was gone and so was most of the tower, the walls slumping, the ceiling opening blankly to the slate-grey sky. At an edge without a railing, a figure stood — a figure of pearly white, the colourlessness of memories, except for the flash of dark red hair.

 _Sev,_ the figure said, or thought, or Snape thought — his mind heard the word, though he didn't know where it came from _._ His brain was lighting up, his synapses rapid-firing. He felt simultaneously awake, asleep, light-headed, like he was about to sink through the floor.

 _We're home_.

A hand stretched toward him, a child's hand, a ghost of silver into the gap between them. Over the caving-in of the floor, over the endless pit below.

Snape lifted his arm and took a step toward the edge.


	21. The Three Brothers

**Chapter Twenty-One**

**_The Three Brothers_ **

 

It was getting dark again. Hermione didn't know how long the sun had even been up for, but it hadn't seemed long. Snape wasn't even back yet. She'd stayed at the library until closing, wearing out several guest sessions on the computer. "Sorry," the librarian said as she turned off the lights without warning, "but I'd really like to go home. Need to stake up my apple trees before they blow away."

"Erm," Hermione said. She pushed herself back from the computer. "Okay.”

She’d loitered outside the library for a few minutes after the librarian locked up and stepped into the street, hanging back for a second, as though she was about to say goodbye and had thought better of it. It was growing cold again, the rain having stopped but the sky still clouded over. The wind was bitter. It was going to snow.

“Welcome back,” the sleepy barman said to her as she trod back into the pub, tracking damp footprints across the 80s-pattern carpet. “Kitchen’s still open. Fancy a late lunch?”

Hermione was the only person there. She wondered if he might be lying, and was, perhaps, trying to chat her up by offering favours. She didn’t know if it was Scotland, or not-London, or how she was forgetting to be self-conscious about her front teeth, but she seemed to have been getting more lingering looks lately, more long glances from the male species (even if they were thirty years her senior). Or maybe it was that she was seeing (was that even the right word?) Snape.

Regardless, and despite the angry scratchiness of her throat, her stomach was rumbling.

“Just a cheese sandwich?” she said.

“Right up,” the barman said.

She was staring numbly at her mobile phone (cycling between no signal and one bar) when a plate slid in front of her at the bar and the stool next to her groaned as the barman lowered himself into it, sighing as he rested his weight on the seat.

“Where’s your friend?” he asked.

Hermione realised she probably should have asked if he had seen him. Her brain felt fuzzy, and she couldn’t quite remember what she had spent her entire day doing, except staring at a computer screen and gleaning little information. She kept expecting her mobile to light up with Dean’s name, but she wouldn’t here, not unless she stepped out and headed back toward the rundown shack at the top of the hill.

“Is he not back yet?” she asked. She picked off the crust of her sandwich.  “He went to the castle.”

An odd silence settled, and Hermione thought she saw him shiver out of the corner of her eye.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Bad weather for it,” he said.

“It could be worse,” she said. She watched him for a moment; his ruddy face was still, his little eyes fixed on his hands that sat folded on the bar. “Something else is bothering you,” she said.

His crooked teeth appeared as he grimaced.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said.

“You think it’s haunted?” she replied.

“No!” he rushed to correct her. “It’s just — you hear stories, you know?”

“What was it?” Hermione asked. “Before. The castle.”

“Old monastery,” the barman said. “I’ve heard, anyway. Probably a fortress first, then the monks moved in at one point. Weren’t there for long, though. Plague got 'em in the end.”

“How do you know this?” Hermione asked, surprised.

He shrugged. “Just somethin’ you know.”

“So they died.”

“Every last one.” His hands stretched, his knuckles popping. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Close quarters, stuff spreads. Can’t have been pleasant.”

“What happened after that?” Hermione asked. Her stomach gave another angry grumble; she had forgotten her sandwich part-way through the first half — soft white bread and chutney stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Became a ruin, must've. No one tends to go there. Kind of pretend it don’t exist. Don’t usually have people coming in to look for it, either.”

“No one?” Hermione asked, for some reason surprised.

“Not that I can remember.”

She played with the other half of her sandwich, tapping the diagonal corner against the flat of her plate.

Then her phone lit up and rang loudly, making both of them jump.

“I don’t have enough signal,” Hermione said. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed her phone, started to rush for the door. “Excuse me. I need to take this.”

“Take your time,” the barman said, and slid her plate away as though the smell would make him sick.

 

* * *

 

Severus Snape’s hand curled around nothing, the red shimmering, then vanishing between his fingers.

"Lily?" he found himself saying aloud, and his breath plumed out in a mist.

He took a step forward and his stomach plummeted out from inside of him, his feet feeling light, heavy, sinking down. He reached out, grasping at air. Inhaled. Tried — no air seemed to come.

 _Cold_.

He tried to open his eyes but his eyes were already open. Opened to blackness, to deep black pits.

He blinked.

Quiet. So quiet. The cold consuming and damp, the silence all-encompassing except for a thick and languid _drip…drip…drip._

 

* * *

 

 

"There's two of them," Dean said.

Hermione stopped for a moment and sniffed as she kicked at a chunk of remaining ice on the side of the road. The yellow light from the sweet shop window cast her fidgeting shadow on the pavement, long and stretching out onto the stone of the cottage across the street.

"Two of what?" she asked. She stepped on the ice and crushed it with the toe of her shoe.

"Stories," he said. He sounded disconnected, robotic, almost, but he was talking, his voice fuzzy with distance and bad reception. He was also refusing to answer Hermione's questions on how he was doing, how was his stay, if his sister knew he was ringing her. "Two called _The Three Brothers_ ," he continued.

"Similar ones?"

"Kind of," Dean said.  "Different, but with the same characters. Or at least they're called the same thing: the three brothers, and Death."

 Hermione looked up at the sky, blinking. Tiny cold raindrops were beginning to fall, sporadic and sharp and icy, stinging her cheeks. She backed beneath the awning but the rain followed her.

"Did you read them somewhere?" Hermione asked as she ducked inside the sweet shop. The door chimed, and the bored shop girl looked briefly up from her magazine as Hermione ducked behind the jars of humbugs with an apologetic smile and a lift of her mobile phone as explanation. She turned toward the window, hushing herself and trying to keep from coughing in an open jar of sherbet lemons.

  Dean continued, his voice a little more staccato with the depleting signal. "No," he said.

"Someone told them to you?" Hermione asked, her scratchy voice threatening to cut out with excitement. "Who?"

There was a dry sort of silence, the vague sound of Dean shifting and the squeal of springs.

"Hermione," he said. "You're the one who told me. It was _you_."

 

* * *

 

The mist amassed, cleared.

Snape was in a bedroom — his parents' bedroom, vignetting in the edges, darkening into despair. Crimson splashed across the floor, pooling in the indents in the patterned carpet, the bed, splattered across the walls. The silence of his mother's still white face, eyes open and blank, looking straight at his father as she had never done in life. As she would never look at him again.

 

* * *

 

"I—I don't remember," Hermione said.

"You're the one who told me," Dean insisted again.

"We're closing," the shop girl said.

Hermione jumped and whispered, " _Hold on_ ," into the receiver, then approached the desk and guiltily slid two plastic-wrapped chocolate frogs across the counter.

" _Herm-o-ne_?" Dean called at the other end of the line.

"That everything?" the shop girl said, and Hermione nodded and handed over her last five pound note.

"I'm back," Hermione said as the sweet shop door swung shut behind her, the OPEN sign flipping to CLOSED. Her voice lowered to a harsh whisper, nearly a hiss. " _What do you mean I told you?_ "

"I—I—" Dean began, taken aback. "You don't remember?"

She didn't know what to say. Only, "No."

"You had the flu," he continued. "I came over to see you. Do you remember that?"

Hermione remembered. It was shortly before she'd been in hospital, and she had never been so sick in her life. She hadn't been able to move from her bed for days, her bones heavy with fever, her muscles shuddering and shivering the very second that the paracetamol and ibuprofen her mother had given her wore off.

"I remember," she croaked.

"Okay," Dean said. "Well, it was when I was about to go so you could sleep -- you asked if you could tell me a bedtime story."

Hermione snorted, but Dean only said, "I'm not kidding."

"I was delusional," she said.

"Didn't stop you from telling me a bedtime story," Dean said. "Twice. And they weren't exactly cheerful."

"What were they?" Hermione asked, voice small.

"The first one…," Dean began. "Three brothers come to a river and build a crossing, and Death shows up, angry because they deprived him of their three souls. So he gives them gifts—"

"I remember," Hermione said wonderingly. "The sword, the stone, and the cloak."

"Yeah," Dean said, "and two of them end up dying anyway because of the gifts that Death gave them."

"I forgot about that," Hermione said. She thought of it now, trying to remember lying prone in her bed, sweating and feverish, of rasping those words to Dean, but she couldn't. She couldn't even remember where the story had come from, how it formed in her mind and wormed into Dean's. Her face burned with sudden hot shame, wondering if this was where it had come from, his obsession with death, his insistence that it was the way out, back to their true selves, whatever form their _true selves_ might take.

"Is that the one you were looking for?" Dean asked.

Hermione shook off those vestiges of guilt, closed her eyes, and thought back to the book taking up significant space in her bag, digging into her back as she walked to the village from the train station. In her head she pinpointed the exact passage, could see the typed words surrounding Bagshot's reference to _The Three Brothers._

"No," Hermione said.

"You sure?" Dean asked.

"It makes no sense in the context," she said. She hated to ask, because for some twisting reason, she was sure she didn't want to know the answer. "What was the second?"

There was another strange silence, and for a second Hermione panicked that the line had gone dead, the grey, rolling clouds overhead and the freezing rain taking down communication, stranding her here forever.

"It's about the end," Dean said. A sudden gust tore down the street, scattering leaves, pulling at the awning above Hermione's head. Dean's voice shook as though he felt the wind, too, and it had chilled him to the core. "You said that the story, Hermione," Dean continued, his voice fading, unsure, "was about the end of the world."

 

* * *

 

Snape inhaled the coppery scent of blood. His parents' bedroom spun, faded to white, then the bright blue of summer. The bright blue of a world upside down.

The blood was in his head, weighing him down, making his vision go lopsided. He saw feet, odd upside-down faces, and his mouth suddenly tasted bitter, terrible, like frothing soap.

" _Filthy little mudbloods—_ "

He fell, though he did not know what from. The air swept out of him, leaving him crumpled, winded, again in pressing darkness.

 _Lily?_ Severus tried to say, but couldn't. Then a whisper: "Hermione?"

There was nothing: no Lily, no castle, no light. There was only stone, blackness, and the cold reaching out, edging into the dark. Grasping with long fingers.

Closing over his bones.

* * *

 

"Still not back," the barman said as Hermione walked back through the front door of The World's End, a name that if she weren't in such a sickened mood would have made her laugh bitterly. "But someone rang for you,"

"What?" Hermione said. "Who?"

The barman was carefully not looking at her, instead fiddling with the buttons on a remote control and flipping channels on the one television set, getting nothing but static.

"Your mum's looking for you," the barman said.

Hermione sighed.

"In trouble?" he asked.

"Not anything for you to worry about," Hermione sniffed, but the barman looked uncertain. She wondered how much her mother had told him.

She knew it had been days since she called her. She was waiting for her voice and energy to come back, the patience to put up with the pestering questions and the insistence that she come home. There had been a text message when they were on the train yesterday, but it had bounced back. She hadn't talked to her except to tell her the name of the next village on their itinerary. "Scotland!" Mrs Granger had said. "In January! With _him!_ Why aren't you _telling_ me anything, Hermione? What did he _do_?" Hermione had protested, tried to allay worries with assurances that Snape was safe, but Mrs Granger wasn't having any, and was instead promising that if Hermione wouldn't tell her, she would find out herself. "And don't stop talking to me. I don't want to have to set the police after you."

She was indeed Hermione's mother.

"Are you sure it's not anything for me to worry about?" the barman said. "She sounded a wee bit frantic."

Hermione ignored him and went up the stairs to her room, at least pleased that he didn't follow after. Her feet felt numb, a bit pinched in her boots and frozen. Her coat was wet. She still had Dean's voice in her ears, ringing in the hollow places. _It was you_.

She dug into her rucksack and left two twenty pound notes on the chest of drawers, just in case. Packed her few things back into her bag and stuffed Snape's half-empty pack into the front pocket of hers. Left the door unlocked and the key on the bedside table. Then sneaked out when the barman was loudly lamenting the failure of the television to pick up one single channel.

It was raining harder now, and Hermione's throat stung as she inhaled the freezing air, turning up her collar against the stinging wind. She was starting to feel unsteady on her feet again, a bit dizzy, but she placed her focus on her legs, making them move, up, down, forward, ever forward, up the hill of Torcmeadh, past the darkened shops, her hands sliding over the chocolate frogs sitting wrapped in her pockets.

The abandoned cottage looked foreboding in the stormridden dark, grey and looming and swallowed in thorns. She looked at it as she hung on the stile, catching her breath, something odd twisting in her stomach. Dean's words still in her ears, in her head, with that shiver of strangeness, of deep-down recognition: _There once were three brothers who commanded Death._

"They're not the same three brothers," Hermione had said.

"They're not?" Dean said.

"They can't be, not at that point," Hermione said. "Two of them would have already been dead."

"Right," Dean had said. "I don't know. It's your story."

The rain grew louder in the trees, the night darker. Hermione's phone was dying but she had no choice but to use it, to light her way with the feeble torch. The wood was thick, the path sodden and blocked with branches. She tried to keep her wits, to be on the alert. See if Snape had wandered from the path, was curled somewhere to protect himself against the night. She had been too distracted to panic before but she was starting to now, his terrible fate playing out across her fevered eyes. "Plague got 'em in the end," the barman had said, and Hermione imagined a castle littered with rotting bodies, skeletal remains. Snape among them, lost. "Every last one."

Dean's voice had been so smooth on the phone, clear despite the interference, as if he were reading aloud: _In a world of magic, the three brothers ruled. But there was still conflict in the land, over power and place, and Death was kept busy gathering the souls of their friends._

"Magic," Hermione had breathed.

"Magic," Dean had confirmed.

Pigeons startled and took flight from the branches overhead, and in the distance there was the shrill barking of a fox. Hermione coughed, choked, stumbled over a root, braced herself on a tree.

_It was the stillness of battle, the silence after the plunge of the knife. The brothers had come across a body of a friend, but Death was late, still roaming the battlefield, harvesting souls into his bulging sack._

_"We cannot let Death take him," one brother said to the others. "Not this one. Not after so many are gone."_

_"We must," said the youngest brother. "We have no choice."_

_"We have a choice," said the oldest. "We have control."_

The forest thinned. Hermione's phone chirped, dying. The wind had gone deathly still, like it was holding its breath.

"Snape?" she called out, and in the distance a darkness loomed in the red night, a craggy shape of fallen stone.

The castle.

_But Death is not easily commanded. When he came for the soul, as he always would, the brothers pleaded for their friend, fatigued with loss and plagued with the weight of their magic._

"Snape?" Hermione called out, then, "Severus?" There was no answer except a low whistle of wind and the screech of an owl. Her steps were growing slower as she approached the castle, more careful, an odd, heavy feeling sinking in her stomach, like disappointment in having come home to find it razed to the ground. This is what they had been looking for? The grey stone ruin, this memory of greatness, now a shadow, a blot.

"Severus?" She couldn't even hear the raw sound of her voice as a gust of wind struck so strongly that it swallowed the word whole. She tried again, but her voice cut off after the first syllable.

She pointed her torch at the ground, searched the dead clumps of grass. There were slick, sliding footprints in the mud. She swallowed, followed them, picking her way, trying not to fall.

_So they bargained. The brothers wagered and Death listened, but Death was cunning. He would not release his souls without a trade — nor, in the end, would he release them at all. Because what the brothers didn't know, is that the bargain they made would place the world in his hands._

"I don't believe in ghosts," the barman had said, but in the wind and the flicker of red light, Hermione could imagine them — pearly shapes sliding across the stones, wisps soaring through arrowslits and doorways. Mist gathering, taking form, hovering above the slick grey stone.

"Snape?" she said again, her voice a whisper, and her foot hit something soft.

Her torchlight fell on a large bundle at the foot of the stairs, curled in on itself, wrapped in black wool.

Hermione's breath hitched, trembled, and the mist seemed to lift, dissipate, until there was only her and her rapid, raspy breathing, the cold of the night.

And Severus Snape at her feet, silent and unmoving on the ground.


	22. The Shack

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

**_The Shack_ **

 

"Severus!"

Hermione's legs almost gave way from beneath her as she crouched down to find skin: a face, a hand, a pulse point. He was tangled in his coat, shrouded in the damp black wool. Cold to the touch. Her torch had gone, her phone off, her eyes struggling to adjust to the dark of night, the scant light reflected back by the storm-heavy clouds above.

Hermione's mouth was dry, the scratch in her throat suddenly sharper, like knife-points. For some reason she was sweating, nervous that even if she found a pulse it would mean nothing.

"Oh lord," she whispered, half-swear, half-prayer. She finally found cool, clammy skin — a finger. Worked up to the palm, to the wrist — no broken bones, no reaction at all. " _Severus_!" she hissed again, and pressed her fingers against the bone, digging hard.

Held her breath.

His heart was still beating. Her eyes adjusted just enough that she could make out which way was up, find the line of his shoulders and turn him onto his back. His pale face glowed the faintest blue, his lips open just far enough to slide a coin between them. She leaned forward across his chest, wary of putting too much weight on him, and held her ear to his mouth as a bitter gust of wind tore through the ruin, grasping at her coat, their hair.

She swore, furious, on the cusp of tears, and cupped her hands around Snape's lips to her ear. Held her breath again.

She sighed and fell back on her heels.

He was alive. He was breathing, his pulse steady and slow. Resting, unconscious. It was impossible to tell but he didn't seem injured — no limbs at an odd angle, no obvious blood or bruises. She worked her palms firmly along the oval of his skull — no swelling.

"Where are you?" Hermione whispered. Snape shivered beneath her touch, and suddenly she understood what had happened.

No, understanding would be a lie, but she knew — she had felt it before, seen what it had made of her eyes in the mirror after,wide, hollow, and haunted. That manor house in Wiltshire — the cold in her bones, the images and voices she'd never heard in her life, indistinct but so real as they tore through her head, pain ripping at her veins and seeking release by shutting her down entirely. She didn't know how she knew, but she did; she felt the cold in his limp hand, had seen the freezing fog that enveloped the ruin as she approached, seen how it had fled, leaving him prone, cold, alone on the damp stone floor.

It felt so stupid but she didn't know what else to do; she reached into her pocket for one of the chocolate frogs, shucked off the wrapping, and edged it between his lips. Held it there so it didn't slip into his mouth, make him choke. Prayed that it would melt on his tongue while not having the foggiest what good it could possibly do.

She held it there for what seemed like hours, like a mother patiently nursing a baby. Her numb fingers held to his lips, wondering if the increasing warmth was because the chocolate was working or because anything would feel warm to her frozen skin.

The wind had stilled again and the cloud cleared, finally allowing the wan crescent moon to shed some light on Snape's pale face. She withdrew the chocolate; it was half gone.

Her legs finally gave way and she collapsed nearly on top of him, only saving herself at the last moment. She eased in close to him, trying to trap some warmth, and stuck the bottom end of the chocolate frog back between his lips.

"Go on," she quietly urged him."Just finish it. You'll feel so much better."

Snape grumbled, and Hermione tilted forward, her sticky fingers tracing the line of his jaw to his throat, supporting his head.

"Severus?" she said. She had to say it too loud, shout it because the wind was picking up and starting to howl through the surrounding trees and stone.

His head rocked to the side and a puff of dust erupted in the moonlight. Rocked back. His black eyes opened and the moon vanished, once more bathing them in darkness.

"Her—" he began, but gave up as a bitter gust swept them both sideways.

Hermione scooted and leaned back against a heavy stone, and helped Snape as he tried to join her, his shadowy movements slow and wincing.

"What happened?" she asked.

"I—" He stopped for a moment, huddled against her side, shivering. "More?"

Hermione fished for the second chocolate frog and tore it from its wrapping, breaking it in half and shoving the remainder back into her pocket, just in case.

"Here," she said. "When's the last time you ate anything?"

He didn't answer, instead holding the frog's head between his back teeth and biting down. The half vanished rapidly, and then he asked, "Water?"

Hermione ( _stupid Hermione!)_  hadn't thought to bring any.

"It will start raining again," she said. "I have the bowl from yesterday in my rucksack."

"You should go back to the pub," he told her.

Hermione's answer was curt. "Maybe we should spend the night here."

If she could see him, and if he had had the energy, his look surely would have been wild disbelief.

"Are you insane?" he asked, with all the energy he could muster. "You are aware…" He stopped and slumped against the wall, once more shivering.

Hermione unzipped her bag and drew out a thin wool throw she'd stolen from the chair in their room and threw it over Snape's knees.

"I'll gather some wood," she said. "We'll build a fire. Now, are you going to tell me what happened?"

Another silence, another flicker of moonlight that showed Snape looking away, face pale, eyes set on the mud.

"Can you walk?" Hermione asked.

He gave an experimental stretch of his legs but again no reply.

"Right," Hermione said, trying to keep from falling over as the levered herself to her feet and her vision took a violent spin. She grabbed on to a crumbled rock to steady herself and took a deep breath. "I won't go far."

It wasn't hard to find fallen twigs and branches, though difficult to find anything dry. She had to go farther than she liked to scour the underbrush in the deepest part of the forest, her ears pricked for the sound of a yell she wouldn't be able to hear and her eyes burning to see in the dark. She arrived back at the castle, half-carried by wind, later than she would have liked, only to find Snape wasn't where she had left him.

"Severus?" she called, her hold tight on the branches and her head throbbing.

"In here!"

She found him below, in a room she hadn't seen before, a dug-out in the foundation with most of its walls intact, half-sheltered by the staircase. He helped her down, his hand shaking, and collapsed back onto the floor as the wind whistled over their heads.

"Bloody storm," Hermione muttered, dropping the kindling in a corner.

"You should go back to the pub," Snape said again. "I'll survive one night."

"Thank you for your concern, _sir_ ," Hermione snapped. The intonation would have been more effective if her voice didn't give way half-way through. "But we'll be perfectly fine out here."

"I believe the wind speed is meant to reach the hundreds."

Hermione whispered curses at the woodpile.

But the room was sufficient in keeping out most of the wind, and most of the rain, though Hermione did panic more than once at the loud, howling crack of the wind, terrified that the castle would crumble and crush them to paste.

"It's survived hundreds of years," Snape said, regaining the strong dulcet tone of voice, though he still hadn't moved from the wall. "I'm sure it will withstand a night of buffeting."

"You're the one who—oh, never mind."

Hermione had set out the bowl to catch rain and they took turns gulping down water, Hermione apologising for sharing her germs, Snape assuring her that he'd already been party to them. It wasn't until the wind calmed again, late at night when the village must have gone to bed, that they both answered the questions that had been asked so many times.

"Why aren't you going back?" Snape said forcefully, throwing another branch onto the fire, missing and nearly putting it out.

Hermione scrambled to tent it above the flame with the others. Her voice was small and she had to repeat herself. "My mum's looking for me."

"I thought you'd been talking to her," Snape said.

"I was. A few days ago. I told her what our plans were, but after we…" She paused and coughed into her shoulder. "…you know." She blushed again, sure it was visible in this light. "I…"

"Couldn't bring yourself to face her?"

"No," Hermione replied firmly. "I was ill, and…occupied. And my mother loves me, but she's just so…controlling."

"I can't imagine," Snape said dryly.

"She's threatened to send the police after me," she said. "Last time I talked to her she said she was going to find out why you'd been in trouble before. And knowing her, she already has. It's only a matter of time before someone shows up at the pub and drags me home because she's certain I'm about to be murdered."

"So you've decided to spend the night in a ruined castle to avoid that fate."

"Do you have a better idea?" she snapped, then softened. "Sorry," she said. She dragged her fingers through her curls as well as she could, then flung several loose strands into the fire. The hairs shrivelled and turned to ash. "Right, your turn," she sighed.  "Tell me what happened to you."

Snape was still propped up against the dripping wall, the tartan wool blanket thrown over his shoulders and wrapped around his neck, his thin face flickering in firelight. His legs lay prone before him, stretched out each side like doll's legs jointed only at the hips.

"I'm feeling better," he told her before she could ask. He brought a knee up as if to prove it and then immediately dropped it back to the floor.

"That's not answering my question," she replied.

"Yes, well." Snape fiddled with the empty bowl, scraped it aside, and began drawing in the mud: a triangle, a circle, and a line, rubbing them into the stone.

"Well?" she insisted.

"What's a _mudblood_?" Snape said, his lips wide-set in a sneer.

Hermione flinched, then said, "I don't know."

"It doesn't sound very polite," he said.

"No," she said. "It doesn't."

He shifted uneasily and closed his eyes.

"The worst moments of my life," he said. "That's what I saw. Cloaked in darkness."

_I thought I would never be happy again,_ Hermione thought.

"And some things that had never happened." He rushed on before she could ask more questions. His finger was moving in the mud again, drawing two parallel lines that curved at the top, joining and continuing, like a wishbone. "What happened to you?" he asked, feigning distraction. "At Faithless House."

"I told you," Hermione said.

"A few details," he replied. He withdrew from his work on the stone, reached a dirty hand into her open bag, and took out her diary and a pen and opened to one of the few remaining pages, sketching the triangle, the circle, and the line. Then just the circle, over and over again, in columns, like a row of buttons.

"You felt things you'd never felt," he said. "Darkness, suffocation, pain."

She gave a shallow nod and a sniff, looking determinedly at the fire.

"Guilt?"

Her face shot up and her eyes met his.

"No?" he said.

She shook her head.

"I suppose you've never done anything wrong," he said bitterly.

"Not that came to mind at the time," she replied in the exact same tone.

He sighed and flipped the diary shut, placed it in his bag, then dug into his coat pocket.

"I have something for you," he said.

She frowned as he withdrew the leather cord along with a black stone that shone as though the fire had been lit inside it. Stared at it as he offered it in his outstretched palm, the black cord trailing from his long fingers.

"A gift," he said.

"Thank you," Hermione said wonderingly, taking it from his hand.

She held it between her fingers. It was warm to the touch, not even damp, no night cold condensing on the surface. It was ugly, not her colour at all, but there was a certain beauty to its angularity and the faint lines etched in the surface, only half-visible in the firelight. Had a familiarity as though it had always belonged to her.

"Help me?" she said, and she handed over the necklace and turned her back toward Snape, sweeping her hair over one shoulder with both hands and holding it firmly in place. His fingers were cold, invigorating, as he trailed them across the line of her neck, settled the stone at her collarbone, and swept them along her hairline to fasten the clasp.

"It's obscene," he whispered in her ear, "my seeing things that haven't happened. Delusions. Made up words."

"I have them, too," she whispered back.

"They're not _real_ , Hermione," Snape insisted, his hand on her shoulder, finding purchase in the collar of her coat. "It's only in our heads."

"Just because it's in our heads" — she took a hold of his hand on her lapel and held it tight, cold skin on cold skin, golden in firelight like alabaster, like marble— "doesn't mean it isn't real."

 

* * *

 

"Hermione, wake up."

He didn't have to say it so loudly. She'd been half-awake for hours, drifting in and out of fitful sleep, never quite making it deeper than eyes-shut-breathing-slow-forgetting-that-she-was-freezing-to-death.

The first thing she noticed upon opening her eyes was that the fire was out, and the second thing was the reason why: the logs were standing in four inches of water.

At least it was daylight, if a breezy, grey, unfriendly morning. She could see Snape clearly now, the bruises beneath his eyes, the greyish pallor of his skin.

"That was stupid," Hermione grumbled, pressing her eyes with the heels of her hands. "Shouldn't have put it in the lowest part of the room."

"Yes, well it was the fire or us," Snape replied, "and I didn't particularly cherish the idea of sleeping in a puddle. Help me up."

He reached out his arms and Hermione obliged, hauling him to his feet with surprising ease, holding him for a bit longer than necessary, hoping he was at least radiating the slightest bit of heat. He wasn't.

"Sorry," he apologised when she let go with a shiver.

"Should've gone back to the pub," Hermione murmured, which actually coaxed a chuff of a laugh from his throat. She pressed his hand. "Let's go hunt for more firewood."

"Hermione—" Snape began, but she was already hauling herself up onto the floor above, not willing to talk about it. Not yet.

The inevitable question: _Where do we go from here?_

She didn't know what the point was in any of this now, but she didn't care. If he had asked, she would have said survival, but even quietly, she knew it was a stupid answer. Survival involved walking a mile in one direction until they reached the village and their rented room. Survival involved going home to her parents and ignoring every bit of her brain that told her, in every small way, that every part of her life was just that bit wrong.

And the point was easy to ignore when there were chores to do. Breakfast to parcel out from the muesli bars in Hermione's backpack, the last bit of chocolate to stave off the rest of Snape's doldrums. "I'm fine," he had insisted, which, Hermione had an inkling, was always a lie. His footsteps were steady if his pace slow. She couldn't remember being so affected by…whatever it was. "Guilt," he'd said he'd felt. She supposed he had had more darkness to swallow him from one day of his childhood than she'd had in her entire life.

The stones were slippery; Hermione had to help Snape down. The land surrounding the castle was a mess; fallen trees ripping scars in the line of the forest, broken branches scattered across the field, distinct bits of plastic drifting from who knows where having come to land, incongruently, on the landscape that looked as thought it otherwise hadn't been touched by man in hundreds of years.

She looked behind her, held her breath in waiting for what _it_ would look like in daylight: that long-awaited landmark, that pinnacle of their search, that last star on their map.

It was, as she knew, just a ruin. Dank and dark and tumble-down with the lingering, sour air of decay. "Anything familiar?" Snape had asked last night, when they were both struggling to sleep. "I don't know," Hermione had said, secretly feeling _no_.

Snape had found a branch and was putting his weight on it as he followed at her side. He was focused on the ground, trying not to trip, but he still noticed the flicker of unease on her face.

"What?" he said, then with raised eyebrows added, "Is something bothering you?"

"Everything's bothering me," she said.

They pressed on.

Firewood was plentiful, dead and only bits of it damp with rain. Hermione made a sling from the blanket and lugged it, while Snape took too long over his selection, delaying, hemming, awing, and driving her generally mad. She kept her calm, however, not sure why she was raging, not sure why she felt the sudden impulse to go back to the castle and fling herself from the highest crumbling tower.

"Something is wrong with this place," Snape murmured as he gently kicked a mess of branches aside, and Hermione sighed her agreement.

"I don't feel like it should be," Hermione said, then stopped short.

A ramshackle shack had just appeared from the mud and gloom, its side haphazard and leaning, its roof half-gone. An old stables or barn, commonplace but oddly familiar.

"Oh look, a roof," Snape sighed, while Hermione took another few steps forward, looking past the outbuilding to where a huge willow tree lay defeated on its side, freshly torn down by the storm.

Hermione's brows furrowed.

"It's coppiced," Hermione said, confused. "It's been cut back. So someone has been out here."

Snape only shrugged.

"Out of all possible human action, this is the only evidence we've seen."

"So someone was practising their pruning. Come, it looks quite dead.  Maybe the branches will—"

They both stopped. The ground wasn't only ragged and torn-away from where the tree had uprooted, but gouged out in a perfect square, and beneath it, a pit descending into the black ground.

"What do you reckon?" Hermione said with a raised brow, a sudden aura of mischief overtaking her, giving her goosebumps, the stone around her neck feeling oddly warm beneath her collar. "A tunnel."

Snape's face was a pale plane of surprise and offence. "No," he said.

"Not a tunnel or you don't want to go in?"

" _No_ ," Snape said.

Hermione dropped the branches and threw her bag to him. He missed and it fell to the ground.

"See you later, then," she said, and disappeared into the darkness.

 

* * *

 

They had to crawl, the soft ground squelching beneath their palms and knees, Snape protesting behind her as she waited patiently for him to catch up.

"This is ridiculous," he said, his deep voice oddly cut off, swallowed by the ground. "It's cramped," he said, "and narrow, and probably going to lead us into the lake—"

"I talked to Dean," Hermione said with a deep exhale of air. She was starting to sweat even though it wasn't warm, the heavy necklace beating a regular rhythm against her breastbone.

There was a pause punctuated by only the wet sounds of Snape's hands and knees in the mud.

"Continue."

Hermione kept on down the tunnel, her sight going funny, spinning a bit, her throat feeling rawer than it had that morning.

"He'd heard the story before," she said. "The one I was looking for. The Three Brothers."

"Did he," Snape said.

"I told it to him."

Another silence, true now that they had both stopped in their tracks. Hermione leant back onto her heels and swept damp hair back from her forehead.

"Sorry?" Snape said.

"When I was ill," Hermione breathed, her voice raspy. "A few years ago. I'm the one who told him the story."

"He's lying."

"I don't know." 

Another pause. Snape was sceptical. "You think he's telling the truth?"

"I don't know where half the things I think of come from. It's not entirely impossible that I came up with something in a feverish delirium then failed to remember it after."

She shuddered; something had just brushed across her ear, and it felt suspiciously like a spider. She started crawling again, and Snape followed after.

"We must be near the end," he said.

For some reason, this made Hermione shiver.

"What was it then?" Snape asked. "The Three Brothers."

"That's the thing, there are two of them," Hermione replied. "Two different stories. Both folk tales, sort of, though the first one seems more so than the last."

"And the first is—" Snape prompted her.

The ground was starting to slope up beneath them, the ceiling dipping lower. For the first time, the darkness was starting to bother her, then bothering her more the more thought she gave to the fact that had felt no trepidation about lowering herself into this tunnel in the first place. _Who does this? s_ he wanted to say (but she daren't, as Snape would undoubtedly have them turn back).

Hermione began. "Three brothers came to a river and—"

"Built a crossing," Snape said, obviously confused. "Yes, I know that one."

"How?" Hermione said.

"No idea," Snape replied. "Doesn't everyone?"

"I…don't think so," Hermione said.

"Just us then," Snape replied.

"And Dean," Hermione said. "And Bagshot."

"And the second tale?" Snape urged her.

"Well…" Hermione stopped to catch her breath and stretched her aching knuckles, turned a bit, wondering if she could see any of Snape in the dark. She couldn't. "…so the first one, it's a sort of origin story for three mythical objects, the sword, the cape, and the stone."

Snape murmured an agreement.

"In the second, the brothers appear again, despite the fact that in the original, two of them have died because of the objects Death gave them. It's sort of a bookend to the first, I think. In _this_ one, they try to use the objects and their supposed power over Death to bring a friend of theirs back from the dead, but it backfires."

"How so?" Snape breathed. He sounded nervous. Hermione had no idea how far back down the tunnel he was from her. He could be as close as millimetres, as far as leagues. Her head was starting to swim, her eyes aching for the dark.

"Death tricks them," she says. "Their friend is resurrected, but Death is given ultimate control. And Death…"

There was a dark, reaching silence, punctuated by an uneasy drip — of water, she hoped — from the low ceiling just inches above their heads.

"Death takes back the powers he gave them, of life, of…it doesn't use the word magic, but I think that's what it means…and… it says _He lifts the veil._ " _She_ said, she thought. _Why those words?_ "He wipes them out," Hermione said. "Every one of them, at the source."

"Who is _them_?" Snape said, suddenly sounding unexpectedly angry.

"I-I don't know," Hermione replied.

"Wizards?" Snape spat. " _Witches_?"

"Us," Hermione said. Her voice was shaking.

"Excellent theory, Miss Granger," Snape replied, his deep voice filling the cavern, booming, "but _we're still here_."

 Dust fell. Hermione looked away from his invisible form, blinking rapidly, her throat burning.

"There's something else," Hermione said, choking out the words. "Dark's Hollow. The castle. One thing they have in common."

"Besides our lunacy."

"Yes," Hermione murmured. His fingers dug into the dirt. "They were destroyed by plague."

She could only hear his breathing now, as well as that unsteady drip…and in the background, a sort of white noise, like a television left on mute. Her ears were going fuzzy, ringing, angry.

"Let's keep going," Snape said.

She turned, shaking her head, trying to dislodge the noise. Another noise had joined it now, the rhythmic smack of the stone against her collarbone thumping hard, louder than usual, travelling through her chest, heart, straight to her brain, making her forehead throb. They were still going upwards, surely almost to ground level by now, when Hermione saw it up ahead. It was dim, and grey, but it was light.

She started to say something, then cut off with a curse as she hit her head on a tree root.

A bizarre image floated across her mind's eye along with the pain — a twin yellow glow. Deep in her ears, the white noise grew louder, grew into a steady, percussive _hisssssss_.

"Hermione?" Snape said.

The stone hung heavy, heavier at her neck. She didn't realise, but she had stopped dead, suspended, as though she couldn't move. As though she wasn't there in that tunnel but somewhere above, crouched, watching, holding her breath. Every bone and muscle aching, every hair on her body standing on end.

"Hermione?" Snape said again. She felt his hands at her backside, pushing at her thighs. "Don't you bloody dare stop now. _Go_."

She arrived at the light without realising it, pushed through a half-crumbled half-door and into a room full of boxes and dust and grey light leaking through brambles and boarded-up windows. He pushed her out, followed after; she helped him to his feet.

They both froze.

"I know this place," Hermione said. She turned, slipped on something wet, and caught herself on an empty crate, her fingers splintering the wood. She breathed in deep. Her eyes were suddenly stinging, but this hissing was gone. In its place was not a sound, but a feeling. A suspense. A waiting for something terrible to happen.

Her eyes fell on Severus. His face should have been bored, exhausted, smudged with dirt. His mouth forming an instant demand that they should go before the rotted floor gave way beneath them.

But he was pale, paler than usual. Black eyes wide. Terrified.

It wasn't she who said it. It wasn't her voice that formed the three words she knew, the ones she'd heard before. Uttered on a single, deep and shuddering breath:

"The Shrieking Shack."


	23. Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter…well, this is THE chapter, isn't it? Three left after this one, already half-written, so the end isn't long now. And, well…  
> Really, not much else to say, other than pay close attention to chapter headings (I know I'm guilty of glossing over), and heed the warnings in the tags if that's your thing, please. Otherwise, thanks so much for all your reviews and guesses and general loveliness thus far. Enjoy?

**Chapter Twenty-Three**

**2 May, 1998**

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (and Surrounds)**

**_Before_ **

Hermione Granger worried the stone terribly the morning the war was won. She hadn't been meant to have it. No one was — not after Harry had lost it in the forest, claimed to have trampled it underfoot, believed Dumbledore's portrait when he told him that no one would ever find it there. Hermione knew he would be wrong.

That was the first thing on her mind when Harry finished telling them about the things he had seen in the Pensieve as they climbed the steps to Dumbledore's — Snape's — _no one's_ office. That the stone was still out there, waiting to be found, as was the man whose memories they had just intruded on, the one whose death she witnessed on the floor of the Shrieking Shack.

Harry was saying something — _smiling_ — but she was no longer listening. Her head was still spinning, dizzying, light. The images of the night refusing to die down in her mind. Ron wasn't even saying anything, just looking at Harry, his emotional depth of a teaspoon obviously proving insufficient. The night was overflowing, overwhelming him.

"You can't," Hermione found herself saying. Her voice was high, shaking. The portraits were blank — all former Headmasters and mistresses leaving with their congratulatory applause and disappearing to join the crowds downstairs, as though Harry had just performed a particularly impressive sleight of hand. And Ron's hand — Ron, whose brother lay dead in the Great Hall while people milled about, eating, ignoring — _his_ hand was on her shoulder, as though she was the one who needed comfort.

She shrugged it off and turned on Harry. "You want to go to _bed_?" The tone of her voice — it wasn't fair to speak to him like that, not after what had happened. She was having a hard time caring. "The stone's still out there, Harry…it's not going to be safe lying somewhere in the forest, no matter what Dumbledore says. And _Snape_! He's still in the Shrieking Shack—" Her eyes flooded with tears and her voice was threatening to cut off any moment. "No one else knows he's there. We have to go and get him. We need to bring him back."

She had been fighting off hysteria all night. Despondency. Despair. The laughter as morning came — she felt none of it. It cut through until she looked down, surprised to find she wasn't bleeding.

Hermione Granger was not okay.

What had she told Harry in the Shrieking Shack, after Voldemort's soft, high voice had filled every inch of the room, shuddered in her bones? "It'll be all right."

That was a lie.

It would never be all right.

Never again.

She had seen Voldemort crumple. She had helped move him to a room off the Great Hall. He was somehow more frightening in death than in life, the red eyes half-open like a sleeping cat's. She had circled him widely, relief flooding her when she reached the doorway without a pale hand closing over her ankle, while Flitwick and McGonagall considered whether his body would be safe to burn.

The Great Hall was full of bodies, as were the grounds outside. _He_ wasn't there though. Perhaps he'd been moved as well, into an antechamber with Bellatrix Lestrange, Yaxley, Greyback. The other one…she didn't even know his name. Who he was, what he'd done, if he was there under his own will, or Imperio'd, or his family and life threatened if he didn't take part. She had seen the hand of the suit of armour in front of her blow apart, the glove flying past her, nearly hitting her in the face. Had pointed her wand at him, seeing only huge eyes, standing-out ears, whispered " _Stupefy!_ " and knocked the Death Eater backward, three steps, then four, then finally, into the path of a green bolt of light thrown by Bellatrix Lestrange.

Bellatrix had screamed, eyes wild, frustrated, but ran on, not noticing she was there, while Hermione only held her breath and waited for her to pass, her eyes fixed on the black-cloaked figure prone on the ground, unmoving. Dead.

Neville was pulling her back before she realised he was there. A whispered shout into her ear, " _Let's go!_ "

It seemed like years ago instead of hours. So much had changed, and yet so little. Harry had agreed to her reasoning, knew the stone wouldn't be safe out in the forest, but he and Ron still stood at the base of the stairs in the entryway, exhausted, waiting for their next instructions.

"Stone first," Hermione said. Her voice was taking on a hard tone, rough around the edges, like it belonged to someone else. "Then Snape."

The day was traitorous. It hurt her eyes. For a fleeting moment all she could think about was how sweet it would be to sleep, to slip into nothing, to forget all. A vial of Dreamless Sleep, she thought, then another, and another….

The forest seemed to march toward them; Hermione could barely feel her legs moving. The sun disappeared behind the branches. Harry, not complaining, led them on.

"I think it was here," he said. His half-lidded eyes were fixed on the forest floor, his shoe kicking at rocks, leaves. "Somewhere."

"Summon it?" suggested Ron.

Harry waved his phoenix wand and whispered, " _Accio_ stone." A flat grey rock flew into his hand.

"Resurrection Stone," Ron stage-whispered.

He tried again. Nothing.

"You don't need to be here," Harry told Ron, obviously exhausted and frustrated, whilst Hermione looked on from a distance, numb.

"It's okay," Ron replied, plainly implying that he'd rather not go back.

"Try the Elder Wand, Harry," Hermione said.

Harry slipped his own wand into his waistband ( _You're going to hex your buttocks off,_ Hermione could hear Moody — dead Moody — say in her head) and held the Elder Wand aloft.

" _Accio_ Resurrection Stone."

It was a matter of seconds before the small black stone appeared, zooming in from the west, glinting in the dappled light and floating in front of them, waiting to be grabbed.

Harry didn't reach out for it; Hermione took it in her grasp and held it tight.

" _That_ ," she said, "is why we don't leave things like this lying in the forest."

They continued through the trees, everything but the warmth reminiscent of so many months spent among similar forest with these two at her side, and trudged on toward the Shrieking Shack. Hermione had never seen these trees in the light of day, and after last night, they should have been less threatening, more just… _trees_. But her mind wasn't there, and the canopy was still thick, and as they walked, not speaking a word to each other, she could feel shapes move around her, shadows slipping across the brush.

She held so tightly to the stone that it started to cut off feeling to her fingers.

She had a sudden, odd impulse. The desire to fashion it into something, like the ring it had once been, but perhaps a pendent, a necklace, something to wear close to her heart. Like her Time-Turner. It _wasn't_ a Time-Turner, but the stone felt so odd in her hand, smooth despite the crack down its middle, and warm, buzzing, nearly alive. She had felt the same elation when she'd sat across from Dumbledore in his office on the first day of her third year, when McGonagall had left her with the Headmaster and a stack of paperwork while she ran after Peeves, who could be heard causing havoc in the girls' toilets.

When the door to Dumbledore's office closed after her, Hermione straightened her spine, clutched at her robes, and waited patiently, knowing very well that Dumbledore would have more to say now that her head of house was gone.

"I shall not scare you," Dumbledore had said to her, exactly as she'd expected. She had felt so small in her chair, swallowed up, so perfectly naive. He dangled the hourglass in front of her like a toy, candlelight glinting in the glass. "Professor McGonagall has already seen to that, I believe. Unlike other means, a Time-Turner it is far too small and you are far too clever for it to have many unwanted consequences." Hermione blushed at the compliment. "You would recognise your own self in an instant and know the reason behind it; however, your friends may be less understanding, as would the Ministry."

"I know," Hermione agreed. "I won't tell them, and I'll make certain to keep out of their way."

"I trust you will," Dumbledore said. He looked at the Time-Turner in his hand, frowning a little, his half-moon glasses sliding down his long nose.

"Professor?" Hermione said.

He raised his eyes to her, soft lips pressing together in a smile of expectation.

"You said other means," Hermione said. "Does that mean it's within our power to turn back time…I mean, more than just a few hours?"

"Oh, yes," Dumbledore replied. "At least, it has been. Regulations being as they are, however, you will find certain methods" — he fiddled the glass between his thin fingers— "have been severely restricted."

"How else could it happen?" Hermione asked. Her fingers were fidgeting with the fabric of her robes, hungry for knowledge, words, mind starving for information.

"Powerful magic, I imagine," Dumbledore answered vaguely, as though he didn't know perfectly well what that powerful magic was.

"Things that could actually change the way of the world," Hermione said, "or the direction it's taken? For good?"

"A complicated, ever-forking path of reason for one so young," Dumbledore replied.

"But so fascinating," Hermione replied. Her eyes fixed on the glinting glass in Dumbledore's hand, his pale, wrinkled fingers wending the chain between his knuckles, careful to not turn it over in his palm. "Though it's impossible to change the past, isn't it?" she continued. "Otherwise events never would have occurred to make you change them—" Her mind rushed along, excitement humming, her fingers drumming faster against her leg. "Unless, of course, parallel universes _do_ exist, in which case we're only creating more divisions in a path—"

"I think, perhaps," Dumbledore cut her off, not unkindly, "that it is best for it to remain beyond our knowing."

"Perhaps," Hermione relented, then added, not able to help herself, "perhaps somewhere…in a different world…there's a Muggle Hermione Granger."

 "And an Albus Dumbledore who sells socks." Dumbledore's voice was wistful. "But that is the difficulty of such a world. Magic is like love. It wants desperately to be found."

"So even a Hermione who hadn't received her Hogwarts letter would know something was wrong," Hermione said, the thought making her uneasy.

"Undoubtedly," Dumbledore replied. "Ah," he continued, "as much as I have enjoyed your most invigorating company, Miss Granger, there will be many hours for postulation and theorisation in our future. Now, I believe you have three classes at nine o'clock, and breakfast in the meantime." The Time-Turner landed on his desk with a gentle _clink_ , the chain coiling around it in loose rings, begging to be twined around her fingers. "You have best make your way."

They never did have time for that postulation and theorisation, the following four years before the old wizard's death rather taken up by other concerns and leaving little room for conversation. And when Hermione handed the Time-Turner back to McGonagall as her third year came to a close, she rather wished that she had used it just one last time so that they could sit down once more in his office, his gold instruments chiming, Fawkes fluffing feathers in a corner, and finally finish that certain train of thought.

Of course, she was right about the impact of time, she knew she was right, and she knew Dumbledore did, too. He knew perfectly well what had happened the night they saved Sirius Black. They were always going to go back — by the time they turned the hourglass three times, they had already fulfilled their duties. Sirius was never going to be separated from his soul that night. Buckbeak was never going to lose his head to Macnair's axe.

( _What if?_ Hermione couldn't help but think. Then two years later…W _hat if we hadn't saved him, only fended off the Dementors and sent him back to Azkaban instead, and he'd be in prison, but alive?_ Then she took Dumbledore's advice and pushed those thoughts firmly to one side of her head, only to summon them up in her mind, over and over again, in those endless hours in the tent as she tried to block out Harry's snoring).

She was having those doubts now. Those ones that screamed when she sent her parents packing to Australia, when she spoke to her Muggle cousin on the phone and Portia told her about the boy she was seeing, the hockey game her team had won, wasn't the weather terrible lately? But nothing beyond that — no real concern, no terror. The beauty of ignorance, a simple life.

While the others lay there dead.

The stone rolled in her hand, backward, forward, then forward, forward, forward. Hermione's intake of air was frozen, bitter, sharp, even though the night had been warm and the morning a hard, white brightness that only seemed false, hollow, like space was emptying, readying to suck her up into nothingness.

The light shifted and Hermione paled.

There were spectres walking with them. Standing between her and Ron, another following in Harry's footsteps. Her friends took no notice of them — couldn't see them — but they were there, grey and opaque and the ground giving quietly beneath their footsteps.

"Hermione," one said. Fred. He scratched his ear, for once in his life — death — embarrassed. "Tell George I owe him five galleons, yeah? He can take it out of my half of the shop. Unfortunate bet, that. And tell Katie Bell—"

But there were more voices joining his, more shapes stepping out of the shadow of the forest, walking beside them as they made their way toward the shack. She couldn't let go of the stone; she couldn't stop turning it in her hand. Now Moody was limping beside her, tossing his glass eye in his hand, the grey pupil swivelling, turning, edges evaporating into the air. "Constant vigilance, Granger," Moody growled. "Can never be said too many times. And now that you're here, don't suppose you can see that—"

Lupin now. Not smiling. "I know Harry will keep an eye on Teddy," he said. "But will you keep an eye on Harry?"

There were more. Endless grey figures, moving with them, following them through the Forest. Colin Creevey, smoking camera in hand: "Tell my dad? I think a Muggleborn needs to…" Even Crabbe was there. Lumbering along, eyes on his feet, voice barely discernible, almost sounding like, "I didn't mean—"

The trees thinned. The wall that separated the Forbidden Forest from Hogsmeade was blown apart, stones scattered across the street. Up on the hill, though, the Shrieking Shack still loomed, whole but its boards pried off, the door hanging wide open.

Another figure appeared at her side, and Hermione didn't know who he was until she turned to look — the standing-out ears, the huge eyes no longer vacant, and no longer trying to kill her: "Dreadfully sorry about that, didn't know what I was doing there. Probably best in the end. Don't cry, it was Bellatrix's fault—"

Her heart was beating hard, the walk up the hill winding her, stinging her eyes. She knew she should drop the stone, but she couldn't, couldn't bear to. The figures followed them — Ron and Harry were talking now, quietly to each other, ignoring her, but even if they were speaking to her, she wouldn't have been able to hear them. All she could hear was the cacophony of voices, lamenting their fates, requesting last wishes, wanting to be known to the people they loved…

Snape wasn't among them. Snape was still there, inside, in a pool of his own blood.

Ron went first, Harry next, Hermione following tightly after, shutting the door behind them. The others stayed outside, unwilling or unable to break through the door. She could still hear them, though. The strains of their voices, weeping, asking _why_ ….

Ron and Harry had stopped, both looking down at the same spot on the floor. Hermione's throat had gone dry. She couldn't will herself to step forward, to have that one niggling hope erased, to know for certain that there was one more person who should be outside right now, scraping at the windows, wanting to make his will known…

"It's really bloody unfair, isn't it?" Ron said, and Hermione looked up, surprised that he had voiced exactly what she was thinking. "After everything — I mean, he was an awful git, but I suppose not that bad, in the end."

Harry didn't say anything. Hermione stayed two steps behind him, only the shining edge of a puddle of blood visible from behind the crates.

"I kind of hoped—" Ron began again, and cleared his throat heavily. "That after everyone, he might make it, you know?"

She could feel her heart beating in her throat.

"Do you think there's anything we can do?" Ron said. "I mean, I know it's too late, just something—you have the Hallows. Maybe—"

"He's gone, Ron," Harry said.

" _Hermione, please—"_ voices whispered outside.

"We can," she said. She licked her lips. Her voice rasped, so quiet. "How many people died for you last night, Harry?"

They finally turned to look at her, faces slack with disbelief, grief, exhaustion.

"I don't know," Harry said.

"And you died," she said, "but you came back."

"Hermione?" Ron said, brows furrowed.

"Why do we have these?" Hermione said, lifting the stone. "Why does anyone? This isn't the first time wars have been fought over magic, Harry. We can wipe out worlds with this sort of thing." She tossed the stone in her hand and it left the surface of her skin for just a second; the voices returned the instant it settled back into her palm. "People shouldn't have this much power."

"I said I'd get rid of them—" Harry began.

"It's not _them_ , Harry," Hermione said, frustrated, exhausted, on the brink of tears. She took a step forward — saw the dark slick of hair on the floor — took a step back against the wall, breathing hard. Grey shapes moved outside the boarded-up windows, sliding through the sunlight, pearly and opaque and far too solid to not be real.

"All those _people_ ," she choked.

Something was changing in the shack. Stifling hot, deathly quiet, a shadow passing over the sun. Ron's hand fell on his wand and he and Harry both took a step back from Snape's body, looking down as though something had changed, saying nothing.

"It will happen again," Hermione said. "More Lupins, more Freds. People's brothers and husbands and wives and _children_."

"Hermione—" Ron began again.

"What does history do, Harry? It repeats itself. People will continue to die, and all because of _magic_."

She lifted the stone again. It seemed to darken, draw in and obliterate all light. She knew that a Time-Turner couldn't bring a person back from the dead, she knew that neither could the Resurrection Stone, not truly. But what had Dumbledore said? _Other means_. And if any means were certain, it would have to be this stone, that cloak, and the wand in Harry Potter's hand.

She almost wanted to laugh, because she kept thinking of what Dumbledore had said, the longing in his voice… _And an Albus Dumbledore who sells socks_. It was such a wholesome image, such a peaceful one. So _right_.

The stone was hot, wrong in her hand. Harry looked foolish with such a large wand. Ron's thigh was half-vanished by the cloak hanging from his pocket. They were three children in charge of the most powerful objects in the Wizarding World, and they had just fought one in a long string of battles for a power that surely no fallible human should be able to possess.

She had spent so long asking the wrong questions. Fighting the wrong fight. Voldemort was far from the first to claim so many lives in the name of magic, and Hermione knew he wouldn't be the last.

She had studied The Three Brothers in such depth — she knew their weaknesses, their foibles, their anger and despondency from a few simple words on a page. How fitting now that the three of them, close as siblings, were in this room, with the wand, the stone, and the cape. But she had missed the point of the entire story, what Dumbledore had tried to teach her in that tale. Facing death head-on was just a side-effect, no longer applicable, not when everyone was already dead. The war won but at what cost, and for what future? Better — for how long?

She had misunderstood the point of the Hallows.

No one was ever meant to have them.

Not from the day they were made.

"Harry," she said quietly, "may I have the cloak, please?"

"Er, sure," Harry said, grabbing the tail from Ron's pocket, throwing it toward her. She half caught it, threw it over herself, and pointed her wand at Harry: " _Expelliarmus!_ "

If she had given herself a moment to stop and think at the time — as she was always telling Harry and Ron to do so often — she wouldn't have done it. She recognised even then, somewhere in the back of her head, a little voice that sounded disturbingly like the Sorting Hat's saying, " _Foolish, irrational, impatient_ …"

But in that moment the stone was hers. The cloak was hers. The wand was hers.

Death was hers.

She commanded it.

And once more, Death proved himself unwilling to be mastered.

* * *

 

**The Other Path**

**January, 2005**

Hermione Granger worried the stone terribly the morning she and Snape burst into the Shrieking Shack. She hadn't realised it at the time, the intense, nearly subconscious desire to clutch it away from her collarbone and roll it back and forth in her hand. She hadn't even noticed the clasp coming undone until the leather hung loose, flying, the stone rolling forward in her palm.

Snape was still saying something, shrinking back from the door through which they'd entered, but Hermione only stood, stock-still, transfixed.

They were not alone.

"Severus?" Hermione tried to say, but no sound came out. He might have still been there — she couldn't tell. She couldn't force herself to turn her head. All she could see, without blinking, without speaking, without moving an inch, were three grey figures on the other side of the room, all three terribly, wonderfully familiar.

Two boys were in front, only feet away from her, staring at something invisible on the ground. And behind them, in shadow — it was _her_. She almost didn't recognise herself at first. The clothes, the hair, the grey mouth hanging open to reveal average-sized front teeth. Nearly seven years younger, as well. But still undoubtedly Hermione Granger, hollow-eyed, as terrified as this Hermione Granger felt on the opposite side of the room.

She couldn't hear them but she knew what they were saying; she could read the words on their lips, channel each one of their voices. Knew the exact sound that would erupt from the younger Hermione's mouth — " _Expelliarmus!_ " — as one of the boy's wands (it was a wand, she knew it would be a wand) flew from his hand to hers. Knew how it would feel to have her hand lock around the wood, run the length of the elderberries from the tip. Feel it tingle beneath her fingers.

The figures vanished; the stone dropped from Hermione's hand and tumbled to the floor. The world unfroze and Hermione fell, too, stumbled back into a wooden crate that split open and emptied pile upon pile of mouldy snake skin handbags onto the floor.

She began to laugh. There was no other way to see, to understand, to relieve the pain building in her head. To process the image of Snape who sat crumpled against a wall five feet away, knees drawn to his chest, hands fastened to his ankles, face pale and contorted with fear. He looked at her as she laughed, rolling in snake skin, and waited for her to finish.

Her ribs were aching when she did. The pain in her head was so searing she feared her skull might crack open. She felt like she was bleeding light; it was leaking from her body, spreading across the floor inch by inch, foot by foot, mile by mile. Illuminating the castle ruins, constructing stone upon stone until they stood, smoking and well-worn but otherwise whole. Until blood and bodies built a battlefield, until she knew the names of every survivor, every death, every….

"Snape?" she said.

He didn't reply.

She clutched her sides. Breathed deep.

"I remember," she said.

Snape drew his knees in, only an inch more.

"Unfortunately, so do I," he replied. "It's a pity, isn't it, that a world of magic is one where I am dead."

* * *

 

It was dark again. Always dark. But the lights were on in The World's End and the pub landlord was there, not looking entirely surprised to see them.

"Still alive, I see," he said as Snape and Hermione came in side-by-side, shivering in the cold.

Snape snorted. Hermione said, "Just," and he gave them back the key to their room.

"Your mum rang again," he told her as they started to make their way upstairs.

"I'll call her back," Hermione said over her shoulder, and she and Snape veritably ran the rest of the way.

The kettle went on immediately. Outside, the wind was starting to pick up again, and she prayed that the electricity would hold out long enough for the water to boil.

"You didn't see them," Hermione confirmed, handing Snape his mug of tea. The bed still hadn't been made and Snape crawled into it, drawing the covers over his feet.

"I saw one thing, Hermione," Snape replied, setting his tea on the bedside table, "and that was Nagini before she ripped out my throat."

"You remember," breathed Hermione.

"Yes, I remember."

It seemed such a simple, insufficient word: _remember_. Yes, Hermione remembered, bits of it, but how could she know everything at any one time? It was like trying to recall an entire book she had read years ago, and all at once. Her head still hurt, and every few minutes her hand flitted to the stone in her pocket, making sure it was still there.

"Is it real?" Hermione said. "It has to be."

"It's real." Snape's hand went to massage his neck. He had a scar there, a long, pearly one. No punctures, no twin marks from a nasty and venomous pair of fangs. "There has never been a thing so real as that terror."

Hermione fell quiet as she spooned sugar into her own cup of tea.

"But it didn't happen," Hermione said. "We're here. We're not in that world anymore."

"What is it then?" Snape asked. His voice was bitter and black. "A sort of limbo? I never believed in an afterlife, now _this—_ "

"I think it's my fault," Hermione said. She settled on the edge of the bed, her stomach suddenly churning at their close proximity. She edged down another six inches. "I think I did it."

"What on earth could you have done?"

She ran her fingers across the handle. A faded painting of a pig's head stared back at her from the curved wall of her mug.

"I had the Deathly Hallows."

Snape frowned at his tea.

"I was not in a healthy frame of mind," she continued, defending herself. "I'd just seen so many die — one I _killed_ , and we'd come to the shack to collect your body—"

Snape swallowed loudly.

"I think we're making it too difficult," she rushed on. "It's fairly simple, isn't it? It was always going to hinge on one thing: in that world, there is magic, and in this world, there isn't, at least not for us, not anymore. Either magic never existed or was eliminated before it reached us." She drew the stone from her pocket and held it up it in the light. "And this makes me think it's the latter."

"'Death brought the plague himself," Snape murmured, and Hermione remembered him telling her this story, one he had heard from the tour guide in Dark's Hollow, "through the forest and into the village, and greeted every inhabitant with a kiss—'"

"I wanted a world without magic," Hermione murmured. "To save lives. And it just…twisted into something ugly."

There was a long silence. They both barely breathed.

"So magic is gone," she said. She took a too-hot sip of her tea and sucked on her burnt tongue, wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her palm. "Everyone died before they were even born, and we're the artifacts left behind."

"I suppose," Snape said. "Just another sequence in a long string of coincidences."

"And the Dementors," Hermione said. "It has to be them, doesn't it? The one thing left." She sneered. "'Death's jerk friends.'"

"Undoubtedly," Snape said dryly.

"But everything else…Dumbledore said to me once…" Hermione replied, drawing her legs up under herself, nearly tipping off to bed, "…magic _wants_ to be found. Everything guided me here. _You_ guided me here. In spite of everything."

If she had more space in her head for propriety, for distressing thoughts, she would be looking more at the bed she was sitting on now, how close she was to Snape. How they were alone, in a room. How she had touched him, slipped her hands across his skin. Pressed her lips to his and asked to come to his bed.

How he was her professor, and she his pupil.

"Professor," she whispered, "I think Dean's right, in a way." Another image sharpened in her mind, shrugging off others: Hogwarts, the castle, and a gigantic form. Hagrid, laying the prone body of Harry Potter on the ground.

"To go back there," she continued, "to the way the world is meant to be…" She reached into her pocket, turning the stone in her hand. The shadows deepened; whispers lingered in her ear. "I think," she said, "I have to die."

* * *

 

"Double portions, please," Snape requested from the barman because it was what Hermione asked for, even though the thought and the smell of food made him feel somewhat sick. But she was in their room right now, naked, showering, and that thought made him feel just that bit sicker. His _pupil_ —

"And a whiskey."

"Double?" the barman asked.

"Please."

He waited at the bar for their food, fingers tapping the wood, attention fixed on a sport — he didn't know which — on the television screen but mind somewhere else. Mind on Hermione Granger. The Girl Who Lived.

His initial reaction upon hearing her — that hesitant "I think I have to die" — was not dissimilar to his concern upon hearing much the same thing falling from Dean Thomas's mouth. Except this time he had no one with whom to exchange glances, no one with whom to share his concerns. No one to tell him that he was mad for thinking that she might, in fact, be right.

Dumbledore (God, _Dumbledore?_ How long had it been since he thought that name?) had kept few secrets from him; he knew Harry's fate, knew what would have to happen. Hermione had told him the events that had occurred — so bizarre, dreamlike in his head, now — after his death. The boy's dying at the hands of Voldemort. Of his coming back to life. He had tried to scramble together some meaning, some sense from it, tried to pick apart her reasoning with questions: "Surely if you want to _die_ , Granger, you will need all three—"

"It doesn't matter if you have them in your possession," Hermione had replied. "Harry dropped the stone in the forest. Voldemort had the wand. He still came back to life."

"You realise this is absurd," Snape responded, not able to help himself.

Her hand traced the edge of her mobile phone, still turned off, but charging.

"So is this life," she whispered her reply.

He was being selfish, he thought. He was dead in that world, and here, his existence was, well, extant, if nothing else. How strange to think back on his Muggle life now that he could imagine a parallel running alongside it, even if it was one he'd never lived. She hadn't asked the question, she hadn't given him a choice between them, and yet now, he felt like she was making him decide.

"It's not fair," she'd said, tear struck. "For you to be here. When there, you're not—" She ran a thumb across her cheek. "What happens to you if I go?"

"Nothing, I imagine," he replied.

"Nothingness, I imagine," she shot back. "Sev—Professor, I can't—"

They didn't talk of _how_.

His whiskey came. He downed it in one and asked for another.

His steps were uneven as he carried the tray up to their room, but his ears were careful, listening. He ought not to have left her alone. She wasn't…what did she say?…in a _healthy frame of mind_.

That was the rub, though, wasn't it? It wasn't that she was mad. It was that she was right. If she wanted to be empirical now, she could give them separate sheets of paper, have them write down every detail they remembered from the years of the war, and see what facts aligned, but they didn't have to. They both knew they were speaking the same language; they both knew that they'd been stranded, here, with each other.

And Snape knew there was only one way back. One way for this world to pass away, surely, to cease existing — turn back time and set them back on the right path. _Her_ on the right path. The true Master of Death was the one who meets him willingly, and did not balk at playing sacrifice to save his friends…

"Perhaps," he had said, "I shall endeavour to make your choice less difficult."

She looked up at him blearily then, confused.

"Miss Granger," he had said, "Hermione, you must not consider me, and while in any other situation, I would say _no_ , most definitely do not do anything like this, this is not one of those situations. I will not stand in your way."

The tray shook in his hand. He knocked at their bedroom door; she didn't answer. He pushed the door open anyway, throat dry, only to find her sitting on the bed, wet hair hanging about her shoulders in ringlets and staring at her mobile phone.

"Dean's dead," she said.

Snape dropped his empty tumbler. Hermione's mobile slipped from her hand.

"I have to go," she said.

There were a million words on Snape's tongue —  "What happened? How? Why? _What happens now?_ "— but he couldn't bring himself to say any of them.

Instead, he could only nod. Swallow.

And take one step to the right.

 

* * *

 

He didn't find it until the morning, when he was packing his things to leave. It was tucked in the envelope behind his train ticket, folded neatly with square corners, one of the few remaining pages from her notebook. There were words there, written in a hasty scrawl:

 

_I think I will wait. Just a bit longer._

_Hermione_

There were two Xs — one carefully crossed out before another appeared beside it, and beneath, a postscript written in a steadier hand.

 

_P.S. Nagini wasn't the last thing you saw before you died, by the way. I was there. I saw._

_It was Harry's eyes._

_No, not Harry's._

_Lily's._


	24. Grimmauld Place Again

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

**Grimmauld Place Again**

_What if I'm wrong_?

It was like a prayer, an emotional tic. Every spare moment. Every time she brushed her over-large teeth (two times per day; three, if she remembered), watching herself in the mirror, she thought it: _What if I'm wrong?_ Every meal time as her parents looked over with grey faces, asking no questions: _What if I'm wrong?_ The morning she put on her only black dress and climbed into the backseat of her parents' car….

And finally, the look on Dean's sister's face as she made her timid hellos.

"I'm so sorry," everyone was saying. She could hear those words fly around her, like the lines of a play she hadn't been told to rehearse.

 Of course they were sorry.

Not nearly as sorry as she was.

"Hi, Anita," Hermione said, misjudging a hug, reaching for a hand instead.

Anita shook it forlornly. "Hi, Hermione."

Hermione said the line because she was expected to. Her _sorry_ came out all wrong.

Anita's expression darkened.

"I know," she said.

 

* * *

 

The storm had lifted but the fog gathered, following Snape from Scotland to Cokeworth, cloaking the train, misting the windows as they travelled through white countryside.

"Can't wait for spring," the old man across from him muttered, shaking open a newspaper.

Snape muttered a response. His bag was in his lap, its zipper split open, and on top of its contents lay the bald velvet box, one of its cardboard sides coming unglued, catching in the zip.

He lifted off the lid and plucked the wand from the fabric, held it in his hand. It was unbalanced, unnatural. He flicked it, earning a worried glance over a copy of _The Telegraph_. Pressed it against the broken zipper of his bag. Nothing.

"Nonsense," he hissed, and threw the wand back into the box. He forced the lid on too hard, blowing out the corners, and cursed himself, suddenly inexplicably angry.

 _Bloody Hermione Granger_.

That last note. So impertinent, so plain, so conceitedly _knowing_. He couldn't stop thinking about it now, what it said. _No, not Harry's. Lily's_. As if he couldn't remember, himself.

Oh yes, he remembered. Hemorrhaging the sweetest moments of his life onto the ground — and that's all he knew about them now: the impressions of those moments, but not the memories themselves. He _knew_ he had known Lily in that other life, that he had loved her. But those images were usurped, shoved aside by arguments in this life, by her shouting at him, by their disagreements and hurt and anger.

And yet, still the feelings lingered: kindness, charity, _love_.

There were so many gaps left in Hermione's note. So much left unsaid.

 _This is your chance_ , Hermione might as well have said. _Take the time I've given you._

 _Use it_.

 

* * *

 

They'd had him cremated. Hermione couldn't decide if this made it better or worse.

The chapel was cold, the chairs terribly uncomfortable. Her parents sat each side of her like prison guards, one with an arm around her shoulders, one holding her hand. She couldn't see the front, only knew what was up there: the West Ham jersey draped across the table, the urn sat on top of it, the photograph of Dean taken before she'd met him, his face spotty but handsome and smiling.

No jewels of light played across the floor today. The sun hadn't shone since she arrived back in London, refusing to come out from behind a heavy layer of cloud. _Dementors_? Hermione had thought, frantically, then almost wilfully, then gripped tight to her handbag and thought, _weather_.

It was beautiful, sometimes, the grey of the cloud. The fog out the window that made her want to huddle into an overlarge jumper, cocoa in hand, book stuffed beneath an armpit. Preferably with a warm bed half-full of someone who _saw_ her. Understood her. Knew how her mind worked.

 _Ron is waiting_ , the other Hermione whispered.

"So am I," she whispered back.

She heard mutters on the way out, when they left before everyone else.

"No one should have to go like that," they murmured.

It was like she'd turned the stone again. Grey shapes filling the crowd.

"No," the others agreed.

And always, " _Poor Dean."_

 

* * *

 

He wrote her three letters. They all ended up in the bin.

February came. He wondered if Hermione would give him warning, or if suddenly this world would just pop into nothingness, his life snapped off at the head.

Sometimes he forgot. Went about his existence like every moment properly belonged to him, as though he wasn't already seven years past his expiration date. Went to the shops. Treated himself to a particularly strong bottle of whiskey after a few nights of nightmares — memories — that came on particularly strong.

"Did it hurt?" Hermione had asked him tearfully the night she left for London.

He had not answered. It didn't matter. She already knew what he would say.

Sometimes he went to the park. He would sit at the pond staring at the ducks, having no crumbs to feed them. He sometimes came with a book, or a newspaper, or at least the self-preservation to go before it started crowding and people began to recognise him (the spray paint on his door was still refusing to fade).  Sometimes he stayed longer, just for that one small chance that he might see her cross the green.

One day when the ground was dry and the sun briefly shining, he threw his coat down in front of the rhododendron and lay on his back, a textbook propped in the air. The sun shone down, warming the black of his clothes, burning his pale cheeks. A breeze tugged at the pages.

He heard the voice before the footsteps, the high, warm, "Sev?"

He looked up. Lily Evans was smiling.

 

* * *

 

 

On Valentine's Day, Hermione woke up to find a dead rat belly-up by the front door. Crookshanks sat nearby, puffy, orange, and very pleased with herself.

"I do wonder about you, sometimes," Hermione said, and went to the kitchen for a dustpan and brush.

 

* * *

 

 

The husband wasn't home. Lily sat him down at her kitchen table, bustling about to put the kettle on, slide biscuits on a tray. Snape sat with his hands in his lap, sure that he was dreaming.

"She came to see me," Lily said. Her accent had changed, just that littlest bit. Posh now, the slightest hint of the strong Cokeworth vowels softening to something one would hear on the radio.

"Who?" Snape asked, jumping at the clack of the plate as she set the digestives in front of him.

"Your friend," Lily said, "Hermione? She told me what happened when we were in school…you know."

"Oh," Snape said. If he were anywhere else, with anyone else, he would be angry. Balk at the invasion of privacy. Mentally scold the girl for sticking her nose where it didn't belong.

But she was here. Lily, here, in this huge kitchen. With him.

"Your girlfriend?" Lily asked.

"What?" Snape said, attention snapping up from the biscuits, settling on Lily's face — still so young-looking for forty-five,  pale skin and freckles glowing in the light coming in through so many double-glazed windows. Looking so similar to how she looked the day she died.

"No," Snape replied, blanching, not able to help but remember — _I see no difference._ "She's not."

 

* * *

 

 

It was almost laughable, piecing her death together like this; she couldn't count how many times she'd almost died at Hogwarts. Voldemort — more times than she could remember. Care of Magical Creatures, Quidditch players drop-diving into the stands. The inevitable Potions accident with Neville's melting cauldrons or splashing something caustic across her front.

"Surely, if magic wants to be found, Professor Dumbledore," Hermione muttered to herself so many times, "it would have found _me_ by now."

Possibly (she preferred) in the shape of a double decker bus when she looked the wrong way before crossing the street, or a rainy-day bicycle accident on the shared pavement. Then she wouldn't have to think, she would just…slip.

Sometimes she tried to help. She'd stand under an umbrella on the most harried sections of Oxford Street, just waiting for a toddler to dash out in front of a taxi, needing to be rescued. Picked up pamphlets for aid recruitment specialising in sending volunteers to the most turbulent regions of the Middle East. Ordered takeaway from the chippy that had been shut down for health and safety violations four times.

"No," she said, tossing the pamphlets in the recycling. "This is getting ridiculous."

She rang the agency later — she would have needed A levels anyway.

One thing she did not expect was for it to become more difficult, especially now that she was separated from _him_. Now that she was back with her parents, who were just as concerned as ever — even more so since Dean had died. They'd set up a permanent Listening Station (capital letters) on the kitchen table, with photographs, a low-sugar biscuit jar, and a notebook for Hermione to write down anything she might be feeling that she wanted them to know, just in case she wanted to "express herself" when they weren't home to listen.

What they hadn't expected was for Hermione to start acting, for lack of a better word, _normal_.

"Are you feeling okay?" her mum asked her when she returned home one evening to find her daughter on the sofa, stuck half-way through a chemistry text.

"Fine," Hermione replied, turning the page.

Course books from Open University appeared in the post.

"Did you want these?" her father asked, poised to throw them in the recycling bin.

"I _ordered_ them," Hermione said, yanking them from her father's hand.

And her parents both retreated to the other room, undoubtedly to talk about her and wonder what they had done right, or that maybe there was the _tiniest_ possibility that Severus Snape…Severus Snape, middle-aged ex-offender…had been good for her.

Neither of them saw the card that she found stuck between two envelopes. Didn't see her stare at it, blinking hard, face contorted in anguish.

 _The Sites of Cokeworth:_ a clock, a fountain, an obelisk of a war memorial full of names. And on the back, only _Thank you_

Nor did they hear her whisper, "For what?"

 

* * *

 

 

Another morning, raining today, child-free again, the blond not-Potters off to nursery. Husband off to work. Lily at home, by herself, obviously at a loss for what to do with her time.

He wanted to tell her. He had brought the wand; it was stuffed into his bag. He wanted to hand it over, watch her slide apart the half-ruined box and tell him that she remembered — not only giving it to him for his birthday, but her very own, in that other world. Her excellent movements, her skilled wand-work. The zipper was still broken. All he would need to do was slip in a hand and close his fingers over the velvet.

"I feel like I should apologise," Lily said, loading more biscuits onto the plate.

"For what?" Snape said, startled. She was always startling him, every word she said. He had never expected to hear that voice again, here or there. And these infrequent meetings, the odd brief phone-call, they were just so… _impossible_.

The box was edging from his bag, the threadbare fabric bulging through the zipper.

"For calling you those names," Lily said. "I should have tried better to understand. And to abandon you when that happened to your parents—"

"There's no need," Snape replied. He sucked in, could feel his cheeks hollowing in embarrassment.

Her hand found his across the table. "Yes, there is. And there's something else."

Her skin was so soft, so warm, alive. He never wanted to let go. Hold it here for eternity.

It withdrew. Her skin squeaked across the glaze of the wood.

"I'm happily married," she said, "with wonderful children." She clutched hard to her mug, blushing into her tea, then looked up at him, those famous Lily Evans eyes prying him apart. "I just wanted to make that clear. I'm glad to have your friendship again, but you need to know it won't turn into anything else."

"Of course," Snape replied. Something wrenched in his stomach, filled him with strange warmth, like he had started bleeding.

Not pain.

Relief.

"Good," Lily said with a pitying smile.

Snape knocked the wand back into his bag with his foot.

 

* * *

 

 

Tuesday was a day when Hermione had particular difficulty letting go. She sometimes harangued her mother into going to the Cross Keys with her, counting on its strong vodka tonics and her mother's penchant for a post-work tipple to be its saving grace. Usually she refused. Today she gave in begrudgingly with an "I don't know what you see in that place."

London was unsettlingly quiet, the Tube stations near-empty. They went through Westminster, Hermione wistfully pausing in front of a telephone booth, Mrs Granger not bothering to stop to ask why.

At the pub, Hermione told her mother she was going to go to the toilet and instead pushed into the garden courtyard, stood before the wall, knocked a pattern with her fist against the stone. It was strangely satisfying, the way the stones didn't move. Solid. Real.

Hermione came back with a second round.

"Why do you like this place again?" Mrs Granger asked, disgusted, as she unstuck her foot from the carpet.

"Nostalgia," Hermione replied. "I used to come here with a friend."

 

* * *

 

 

She had stopped dreaming about Ron.

 _Is it normal to feel this way_ , Hermione wrote in the Listening Station diary (her own notebook was finally full), _or am I a terrible person for getting over him?_

The next day, blue ink appeared beneath it in her father's hand: _Time heals all wounds_. _As long as they don't fester._

And then her mother's: _Or at least makes them hurt a little bit less._

 

* * *

 

 

It was another Tuesday when she found herself once more in front of Grimmauld Place, staring at the gap between houses, knowing nothing would appear. The weather had turned warmer and she only wore a jumper, periwinkle and cabled, cozy and soft and so warm.

The same hat still hung from the railing. Its pattern had faded, its wool starting to rot; it had been moved three fence posts to the right.

"You, too?" a deep voice said at her side.

She didn't have to look.

"Me, too," she said.

She didn't see his face; only felt the weight of his eyes upon her, pinning her into this place, knowing her wholly.

“I think I can wait,” Hermione said. “A little bit longer.”

Snape's hand lifted, reached. "Only a bit?" he said.

“A bit,” Hermione confirmed, and her fingers laced around his, and she held on tight.


	25. Before I Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second-to-last chapter. You may understand now why I've put off posting for so long. 
> 
> Chapter Twenty Six will be posted tonight, and we will be finished.
> 
> Take a deep breath....

**Chapter Twenty-Five**

**_Before I Sleep_ **

 

Hermione Granger and Severus Snape never married, nor did they have any children. It was not a deliberate thing on either part — rather, the habit of either action or inaction was difficult to alter, whether it was breaking routine to arrange a license and a small town hall wedding, or finally shaking off the steady _drip-drip_ of hormones into Hermione’s fragile reproductive system. They did talk about it, and they did decide to try at some point (or rather, not _not_ try), and attempted to reject disappointment when result after result told them what they already knew, and what they would have hated to hear from anyone else: it was not to be.

But it wasn’t. Not for them. Hermione was not Lily and Severus was not just some Muggle husband. Children to be had here would be children to leave behind when, if, the world they had once known was to ever come to pass again. Perhaps their bodies were more assertive where their brains were not, Hermione often thought, but she couldn't decide whether to be resentful or grateful.

“I never wanted them anyway,” Severus said to the wall the night of her thirty-eighth birthday. He was trying hard not to sulk but was no longer very good at stowing his emotions somewhere Hermione couldn’t see. The streetlight outside — it had finally been fixed — still managed to leech through the bedroom curtains, glimmering off the fine strands of grey in his hair.

“I want them, someday,” Hermione said, knowing it was a stupid thing for a woman near-forty to say. “Not now.”

_With Ron_ , she thought, but she wouldn’t need to say it out loud. They never talked about it, the idea that she might have another life after this, another chance.

Another life that Snape had already departed.

“You’re enough,” she said in a rare show of affection, and pressed her lips to his shoulder.

“Mmph,” he grunted, but sounded slightly more pleased as he rolled onto his back and finally went to sleep. She held the black-stone pendent, always faintly warm, clutched tight in the palm of her hand.

* * *

 

"Maybe today?" Snape would tease her in happier times, as he left for work each morning, tie tight around his neck, shirt starched half-way to standing up on its own.

"Maybe, Professor," Hermione teased back, and kissed the sharp edge of his cheekbone.

He hated romance, hated gushing, but he would find a way to show his gratitude each evening when he returned home. Chocolates (Hermione had a fondness for salted caramel). A book to fill the new shelves they'd installed in the sitting room. A leaflet for double-glazed windows.

"You do know that all I want to hear," Hermione had told him, "is that I am always right."

He had tried hard not to smirk then, and that was enough — she knew that even if he didn't say the words aloud, he had as good as admitted them. On multiple occasions.

Being right only seemed to grow sweeter as she grew older. The deluge of e-mails that flooded Snape's inbox until he finally gave in and applied for the full university scholarship for ex-offenders — and won it. Her pressing him to apply for a teaching position at the secondary school and college in town. He hadn't got it — "I'm afraid for child protection reasons" _blah blah blah_ — but they'd offered him something sweeter instead. A research job, and one that didn't involve teaching idiot children.

He had his own moments, as well. The tiniest seconds that she looked at him begrudgingly, her face tight at his smug expression. Never mean, but always gloating.

He was wearing it the minute he bent down over her shoulder, looking at the computer screen at the sales figures for the third children's book she'd written. ("Plagiarised," Hermione had corrected him. "The original author just doesn't exist in this world to sue me."

"There are creative differences," he had replied. "And the original author didn't have the great illustrations of the late Dean Thomas.").

"Not bad," Snape intoned, his nail moving down the spreadsheet, as if to flick punctuation marks from lines of numbers.

"It's not enough to live on," Hermione had sighed.

"No," Snape agreed. His breath rustled her hair. "But surely enough to get us by until you change your mind."

 

* * *

 

Years passed so quickly in the Muggle world. Hermione remembered every moment seeming so much more agonisingly slow when she was at school, either St Anthony’s or Hogwarts. Perhaps it seemed even longer, remembering two parallel lives, twice as much stuffed into a narrow stretch of eighteen years. But surely it wasn’t meant to move as quickly as this. Surely her parents weren’t meant to retire, settle up the house in London and spend the rest of their sentient years combing beaches in Dorset. Surely Crookshanks should have been immortal, not live to a rotund age of twenty-two before she, for all it looked like, actually ate herself to death. How one governmental election seemed barely over before they were already campaigning for the next, leaflet after leaflet stuffed through the postal flap and cascading onto the wooden floor, as though anyone in Spinner’s End would ever vote for anyone other than Labour.

She took the necklace off every once in a while. Panicked, wondering if that was what was making time speed by unchecked, if its sole purpose was to rush her on to a quicker death. It would sit for weeks in the wooden box on the bedside table before Hermione, worried that the little rotting house would be burgled (as though it ever looked a place desirable to thieves), fastened it quickly around her neck with an apology for ever having abandoned it.

Snape tried to wear it once, in the beginning, coiled in his jacket like a pocket watch, but only shuddered and shoved it back her way, explaining, “I don’t like it. It reminds me that there's nothing there. Not for me."

Always implying, never saying, _You're here, with me_.

He did not touch it again.

 

* * *

 

Surely it was selfish to continue. Surely it was cruel to keep going in this wrong world, this tilted world, with the people walking about as though they weren't meant to exist, for lives to carry on with purpose, only to snuff them out at the pinnacle, at the prime.

For all the joking, the jibing, Snape knew Hermione was terrified.

"What if I'm wrong?" she always said, fighting back tears.

"You'll know when you're right," he always replied.

_When?_ Hermione thought. Every birthday, every holiday, every loss. _When will it be right?_

Times of illness were the hardest, especially the creeping, angry, lingering ones that plucked at bones, lungs, heart, eyes. Made breathing painful, made living worse. Most especially when they happened to Snape.

"Let me die," he said on more than one occasion, ever dramatic, as he shivered in their bed and soaked the sheets with sweat.

"Don't be an idiot," she always replied.

Except once.

It was going to happen eventually as their lives grew on, he especially being so much older than she. She had tried to ignore it, tried to push aside the fact that she was only in her forties when his bones began to creak, his lungs began to crackle, the old house finally getting to him, wanting to claim another life.

"Maybe we should move," Hermione had said on more than one occasion, but both of them knew she didn't mean it. The house was a part of them now. Moving would be another revelation entirely, another acceptance — just like the not-not trying for children — that perhaps they might stay after all.

It was too late now. The curtain was fluttering, closing. They had had a good life. A long one. They so often refused to say it but they loved each other. They both knew, even for the lack of words. It was the looks, the affection, the fact that they could live so long under the same roof, encourage each other in word and deed, cling so close to each other at night.

It was only right that on the night that Snape would die, she would feel an immense sadness, a deep regret. Relief, too, at the decision being taken out of her hands. Thankfulness that she had waited, given him — been given — the chance.

Snape's hand was in hers, growing weaker all the time.

No one else was there, no one else was needed. And yet, Hermione knew the presence at her side. They had met before — how often had she felt that presence an adversary rather than a friend?

“Will you remember me?” she asked Severus Snape as the night drew on, when his breath began to catch, his pulse fading to a distant tattoo. “After?”

Then the sinew tightened minutely, the lines of two lifetimes deepening the creases in his face. The pendent hung between them, rocking, the black stone sucking in all light.

Snape's throat was dry, his breath papery. She had to bend her head to hear him, to feel the word in her one good ear:

“ _Always_.”

 


	26. The Second Life of Hermione Granger

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

**_The Second Life of Hermione Granger_ **

All good things must come to an end. All good lives must meet their close, and Hermione had watched Severus Snape slip away into the robes of Death for the second time, only this time as an old man, ready to greet him, ready to make his peace with the life he’d had, and the life he would leave behind.

Eventually it would be Hermione’s turn. Eventually she would find herself fed up of loneliness, fed up of spending her twilit years running through memories alone, now that Dean, Snape, even Lily were gone. No one there to remind her, no one there to keep her thoughts in check.

One day it would catch up with her; one day Death would show up in the Spinner’s End kitchen and stretch out a long-fingered hand.

One day Hermione, when she still had her voice, would hold her wrinkled fingers to her mouth, take the leather between her lips, and feel the hum of the stone against her teeth.

“I am ready to go back,” she would tell the stone. The kitchen would be silent, with only Snape’s favourite clock ticking, ticking away the time. “I am ready to return to the life I've forsaken." She would have felt it all day — the way the house seemed to shimmer around her, shudder, prepare to slide away. Her heart would stutter every so often, like the protests of an old, backfiring car.

But she would be calm.

She would be ready.

She would say, without hesitation, “I am ready to die.”

And the world as she knew it would slip away as if behind a veil, and Death would carry Hermione swiftly, gently, oh-so-sweetly, to the other side.

 

#

 

**2 May, 1998**

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry**

**_After_ **

 

Hermione was breathing. Her heart was beating. Her body was tight, lithe, young, humming with electrons and neutrons and protons and all sorts of things she hadn’t yet found out about, perhaps never would.

Not in this life. Not with a wand in her hand, a stone in the other.

Not in the Shrieking Shack.

“No!” Hermione shouted.

The Elder Wand went white-hot in her fingers and dropped to the floor. The cloak slid from her head and pooled on the ground in molten silver. She stuffed the stone back into her pocket.

She swore, and Ron said, worried, "Hermione?"

"Wait, hang on," Hermione said, scrambling for the wand she had just dropped. She was panicking, her mind racing, scrambling to keep itself blank, to keep itself from wanting, _wishing_ , for something that was never meant to happen, not in this world….

"Disarm me," she said to Harry. "Get it away from me!"

"Hermione?" Ron said again, but Harry only pointed his wand at Hermione and said, " _Expelliarmus._ "

The Elder Wand soared into his hand, clutched tight between his fingers. He shoved it back up his sleeve then frowned at Hermione while Ron looked at her with a mixed expression of admiration and disgust.

"Hermione?" he said again, as if he couldn't believe she was real.

She tugged hard on the skin of her wrist. Neither could she.

She stepped forward, started to say something, and trod in something sticky. She looked down and the world opened up beneath her feet.

 _Snape_.

She was still for one second, in one entire piece, blood spreading beneath the toe of her shoe.

Then she shattered. Her mind broke into a million pieces, her life a firework. She remembered. She remembered.

_She remembered._

"Hermione?" Ron said again, and she wondered how many times she could bear hearing her own name.

"Severus," Hermione said, and kneeled in his blood. She felt for a pulse that didn't exist, the familiar skin that was firmer, years younger than she had known it in that other life, when they first met, pressed together, kissed.

And she wanted to do it again.

“Hermione?” Ron was still saying like a chant, but she couldn’t hear him. The wood groaned beneath her knees. One hand stroked his lifeless face, slack in death. Her other found his fingers, wanting to do the impossible:

_Bring him back._

“He’s gone,” Ron said, his voice careful, edging, but still too loud.

“I know,” Hermione said.

“Just…what Harry said changed how you think about him that much, eh?” Ron said, and Harry gave a warning, “ _Ron_.”

Something was slinking away. Edging back through the darkness. If there was a folk tale to be written about this night, anything other than about the boy who gave his life so the world may live, it would have been about this man, this man on the floorboards, his black hair clotting with blood. His face pale, black eyes open wide. The tale would have no real ending, no real hero: it would only be a day-in-the-life of the Reaper, come to collect his due, come to harvest his promised soul with no permission granted to sup on the living, past or present. A cautionary tale: The Half-Blood Prince.

No promises made tonight. No bargaining. No unwitting jobs given to Death, to move through the world, to wipe them out before they had a chance to take first breath.

Was her chance over? Could she summon Him back, make this choice all over again? She could live that life over and over again, rush back into herself on that pavement in front of 12 Grimmauld Place, to the moment a dark figure appeared at her side and said, “You, too?”

To the moment she found him at King’s Cross Station, right at the entry to Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters.

To the second she stood at the foot of his stairs and said, “Could I spent the night with you?”

To his tired eyes fixing on her in the dim light, to the dry whisper of _Always_.

“I want children,” Hermione said aloud. Snape’s hand felt so not-right in hers. So lifeless, so slack. No wryness in his grip, no pressure that was just on the lightest side of pain, trying to make her finally protest, to see if she was still there.

“Er,” Ron said. He must have been blushing, but Hermione didn’t look up to make certain. “Okay.”

“Are you all right?” Harry asked, but tonight of all nights, ask anyone and it would have been the stupidest of questions.

“And potential,” Hermione said. “I want the chance of another life.”

“Look,” Ron was saying. He was going to cry. His voice was thick with it, choked with tears. “Maybe it’s not—”

Hermione wasn’t listening. Everything had become so still. So serene. The pieces of her head had flown back together again, an explosion in reverse. Her tears were no longer falling. The cold of the shack could no longer bother her; her _body_ could no longer bother her.

She was young again.

She was a witch again.

She had been right.

“We should go,” Hermione said. Snape’s hand fell limply into the pool of blood. It was Harry who folded it back across Snape’s stomach (if Hermione tore apart the buttons of his waistcoat, would she see the same scar wending its way across his ribcage?), and it was Ron who flicked his wand, and with the charm Hermione had taught him so many years ago, sent Snape hovering gently, silently, into the air.

“He’s gone,” Hermione said, because she had to.

“Yeah,” Ron said.

His hand found hers, his thick fingers digging into hers ( _so young!_ ), pressing hard into the tendons in her palm, as if he knew, as if to tell her, _You’re still here._

“Poor Snape,” Ron said, and Hermione once more, despite her careful composure and her promise to herself that this was a moment to celebrate, not to mourn, found herself biting back another deluge of tears.

#

The hall was emptying, beds calling to the survivors, beckoning with feather pillows, plumped cushions, curtains that blocked out all light. A house elf greeted her in the corridor  — she couldn't even remember her name — and told them that their beds were made up for them. They need only go up to Gryffindor Tower, and they would find everything to their liking.

There were a few remaining in the great hall. It was so odd, standing there flanked by two boys she felt like she didn't even know anymore. It felt awkward, wrong, like they were friends who had lost touch, deigned to meet up again and felt the pieces no longer quite fit. Hermione felt wholly out of place among them, terrified that the slightest mis-step would have her pegged as an imposter.

 _What if I'm frightened_? she had asked him.

 _Be brave_ , he'd replied.

Dean was there, leafing through the day's already ragged copy of _The Daily Prophet._ She froze in the doorway, Ron already pushing through, Snape hovering in front and ready to join the line of the dead. Hermione watched him disappear behind a table; she couldn't will herself to move.

Dean gave Harry a sad little smile, a comrade's weary expression, and didn't acknowledge Hermione once.

"I need to go," Hermione said. "I need bed."

" _Now_ she—" Ron began, but she didn't stay to hear the last of his sentence. She ran up the steps without them, every bit of her buzzing, alive. The sound of her footsteps seemed louder than life, echoing off the stone. Her shadows were darker, her breathing more pronounced. She felt full of oxygen. Her fingers tingled.

Her mind fixed on Snape.

 _He's not there_ , she reminded herself. _That's not him_.

They had talked of this. He didn't know her decision — she had never brought it up — but he must have thought of it. Given it its due consideration, when he thought of her life after he was gone, what actions she might take to make it bearable.

That she might write herself a letter, tell herself of the things she'd forgotten so she could read it when her life once more came to an end. Harry would do it if she asked — tap the Elder Wand against her temple and whisper _Obliviate._ Her old life would slip away and she'd be only eighteen again, only a girl — a girl who had seen too much, but a girl who could be contented with the one life she knew, with a husband, with the children she'd once longed for.

But she wouldn't think of it now. Not tonight, now that she was alone, the dormitory empty, even the portraits large stretches of blank canvas. Not even whispering in the dark.

Her old bed was made, empty, as though waiting for her, the curtains gaping at the very place she'd always climbed in. She slipped out of her dirty robes, slipped between the sheets. Leant back in her bed and gathered the curtains closed. The pocket of her trousers bulged, and she brought out the stone that she’d promised to keep secret, that she’d promised to keep safe, that she’d promised to bury, deep in the ground, in the morning.

She was so tired and yet her brain hummed, her vision blurred, ghosts clouding her line of sight. Lurking among her bedclothes, among her sheets, among the curtains that floated like wisps of smoke about her bed. Whispers unfurled in her ears. Longing unfolded on her tongue.

She licked her lips. The stone weighed heavy in her palm, seemed to grow warm, heavy, radiating a life she remembered but had never had.

_Would he remember if he were here, if he were seeing, breathing, alive?_

She placed the stone on her lifeline. Turned it over three times.

Her hand sank onto the bedding, into the hollow of her crossed legs. Held tight.

“Hello,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

“Hello,” Severus Snape replied, and gave her the warmest and most secretive of smiles.

  
  
>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who has left a review, a kudos, or recommended my little fic to your friends. I've enjoyed every minute of writing this despite its entanglements and its turmoil, and I think I will always be proud of it. Thank you for helping me bring it into the world.
> 
> As a side-note, I know there still might be questions or curiosities and I'd love to have a little Q&A. Have a question? Leave a review and I'll answer on Facebook (see the link to my page in my profile). If on AO3, I'll answer in the comment threads.
> 
> Thank you all again, from the bottom of my heart.
> 
> ~Wonk


	27. OMaM Artwork

Sorry to give a heart attack with this update--I just felt I had to post this gorgeous artwork done by Yad.

Link:http://thepoisonofjealousy.diary.ru/p211455481.htm?oam#more1

Thank you so much, Yad!

And to everyone else: still planning on that chapter twenty five and three quarters, one of these days...


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